“Western Feminism Judges Women Around The World With Bigotry”: Suleika Mueller On The Harmful Legacy Of Extremism

Born and raised in Switzerland, Suleika Mueller is a name you might not have come across before. Her foresight, though, is another story. “Ever since I was young, I had dreamt of leaving Switzerland and move to a global city to pursue a creative career,” she tells me. “As my parents weren’t supportive, I worked in retail and hospitality for three years after I graduated from high school in order to save up enough money, and then finally moved to London at the age of 21, where I had a fresh start in a less toxic environment.” With a poise deeply mature as it is tranquilising, and words that speak to her contemporaries with heartfelt candour, her move to the British capital was the true catalyst of her creative venture. “I really needed an environment where I felt safe enough to learn, explore and be playful with my artistic practice,” she says.

Mueller is too aware she might be (over)spilling in this interview, but she does it anyway shows no signs of holding back. “My upbringing was quite complicated and something I’m still processing and figuring out today, not least through my artistic work,” she asserts, with unassuming honesty. “I was born into a Sudanese Sufi Muslim order (based in Khartoum, Sudan), so I grew up with a severe tension in my life, going to school in Switzerland whilst spending all my holidays, weekends and free time travelling to Sudan, Egypt, the UAE or across Europe to be with the Sufi community. The Sufi order members were my family who raised me, taught me how to walk and talk and it was beautiful to grow up in a large and loving community.” Her growth came with a cost, which led her to route through the challenges of her heritage, due to her religion being quite a significant foundation of it. “It was really difficult to navigate a Western life in Switzerland with my Muslim faith, Sufi worldview and religious practices,” she confesses. “Due to the Islamophobia in school and an innate sense of being different to everyone around me, I ended up suppressing parts of myself and just tried to blend in. This came at a big price as I didn’t allow myself to be fully and wholly myself, so ever since I’m an adult I’ve been working at changing and unlearning that.”

Her artistic grounding is stamped across her culture. She speaks of “views very much informed by social justice movements, climate change, racism, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ narratives,” resulting in a powerful narrative that flows throughout her work stream. Mueller’s intelligent practice and ethereal works are matched by her well-attuned sensibility, not just in excellent photography—but also in her minimal visuals. “My work is very much informed by my personal experiences, but I also love to do a lot of research, so I guess it’s always a mix between those two,” she says. “I’m very interested in psychology, spiritual practices, mysticism and the human condition, which definitely have a big influence on my work.” On setting her own imprint, Mueller is fed up with giving and trying to be an easily digestible version of herself. “My work becomes a unique hybrid of all the contradictions, tensions and complexities of my identity,” she says, “[And] As I practice more self-love and allowing myself to be my unapologetic and imperfect self, I also grow in accepting other people for their true and imperfect selves.”

But back on the culture truck: Growing up between the East and West, going to school in Europe whilst practising Sufi Islam, Mueller’s Sufi sheikh specifically focused on challenging Western-centrism and extremism as ideologies; the latter phenomenon massively shaped a decolonial worldview and approach she had to confront. “One thing that I think most cross-cultural children can probably agree on is that you have deep insight into different and opposing worldviews,” she recalls. Growing up, Mueller struggled with the preconceptions, judgements and false views that one world or society holds against another. “I’m tired of the Western world’s Islamophobia, its distorted views and misconceptions towards Muslims and especially Muslim women. Similarly, there’s a lot of judgment and prejudice towards the Western lifestyle that the Arab world holds, which is not great either.” From a young age, the creative learned that people’s views were distorted and seen through their own lenses, with an underlying notion of superiority that, somehow, deem their particular lifestyle or worldview was the only right one and that the rest of the world should live like them.

And Mueller wants her work to epitomise a sheer sense of eclecticism, beauty and multifarious representation. “In my imagery I capture women of all different ages, with different lives, beliefs and worldviews, across the planet. I want to give women a space where they can be whoever they want to be, without any judgement. All those women are strong, empowered, beautiful and unique in their own ways. Western feminism tends to judge other women around the world through bigotry, with a systematic viewpoint I define WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic). I want my images to actively stir away from that, highlighting women that don’t fit into the narrow box of what Western feminism has termed to be a ‘contemporary’ or ‘feminist’ woman, whilst showing that they can be just as, or even more empowered.”

Confiding the principle of identity in womanhood, Mueller recounts strength, humanity and vulnerability as means of self-discovery and influence, revealing her dealings in grasping a freedom she was always deprived of, and never truly earned. “I never matched that description [of a real woman]” she says. “I was always criticised for not being womanly or feminine enough, my mother detected my queerness early on and shamed me for it immensely. I felt frustrated and confused as to why I just couldn’t fit the description and why I was such a disappointment, which ultimately led me to question the concept of womanhood in the first place.” In light of the revolutionary times we’re currently grappling with, Mueller confesses she doesn’t like to define constructs such as femininity or womanhood any longer. “Concepts and definitions ultimately have the tendency to limit us and can make people feel excluded just as they once made me feel excluded.”

The moment I question Mueller on the reasons why she aches to explore the female gaze, she walks the talk. Again, saying it as she thinks it: From her discomfort of the fetishisation of male supremacy to her inner struggles, insecurities to self-doubts, she’s steadfast about reclaiming her narrative that, as she deems, “needs to undo the harm” that mediocre male power—and broader society—have uttered. “I want my images to encourage the viewers to be more self-loving, to feel seen and represented and to know that they are perfect just the way they are,” reckons. Operating far outside the confines of her strict heritage, Mueller is now concentrating on creativity and freedom like never before. “As I grew up in a religious and spiritual order, there were no boundaries or differences between people of different colours, cultures and countries,” she ponders. “We were all one big family with the same spiritual goal, same spiritual leader and practice and that’s how I perceived the rest of the world for a very long time.”

At a time where we’ve experienced isolation and loneliness to its full capacity, Mueller relishes for the slow changes in the media and in fashion, nodding on individuality and the heartache of her forward-thinking journey. “It’s very crucial for me to see every person for their unique individuality, not least because that’s how I wished I would have been treated growing up, but I also think there’s a danger in getting too caught up and lost in one’s own individuality – failing to see that ultimately, we’re all more alike than we are different,” she says. And, drenched in emotional turbulence, her closing footnotes brim with much-needed optimism. “As with most things in life, a healthy balance is key.”