How Shall We Greet the Sun explores the personal stories and emotional landscapes of young women refugees living in the Netherlands, including Thana herself. Published as a book, this project reflects their shared and individual journeys, balancing the challenges of forming new identities within the diaspora with the nostalgia and trauma of their pasts. These women navigate lives shaped by new cultural contexts, power dynamics, and memories, exploring how identities are continuously reshaped by current circumstances and the homes they left behind.
Within this larger project, a short film offers an intimate lens into the fragmented memories of women migrants, mediating between the joy of reclaiming normalcy and the sorrow of loss. It juxtaposes Randa's reflection on the simple yet profound joy of having a private bathroom in a refugee camp with Thana’s mother in Yemen, who shares a family photo filled with faces of those who have passed away in her absence. These intertwined recollections reveal the paradox of creating new memories in post-disaster settings while being haunted by the weight of what was left behind. The film reflects on how memory shapes a sense of belonging and how emotional exile emerges from the tension between joy and grief.
“We are in a kind of archaeological restoration program, where we try to build and construct a new life over the ruins of our past losses. Our homes are under construction. Our bodies are under construction. Our finances are under construction. Our identity is under construction.”
Through her multidisciplinary work combining photography, textual narratives, and moving images, Thana Faroq encapsulates the resilience of women migrants. Her visual and textual explorations serve as a poignant reminder of the continuous process of rebuilding life and identity amidst profound changes and loss.
Thana Faroq a Yemeni-born photographer, writer, and educator living in the Netherlands. Her multidisciplinary work, which combines photography, textual narratives, and moving images, explores the transformative experiences that have shaped her identity and sense of belonging in both Yemen and the Netherlands. Focused on themes of memory, migration, and intergenerational trauma, her work serves as a visual autobiography, highlighting women's resilience and the search for belonging in post-disaster contexts.