Every week deserves a new artistic discovery. Conveniently, there is science to justify the habit: a growing body of research, including studies highlighted by UNESCO, suggests that engaging with art on a regular basis is linked to better wellbeing and lower stress levels. So these weekly artist selections aren't just here to satisfy your curiosity — they are practically a public health service.

This time, I want to turn our attention to Yemen. And here is a fun fact before we begin: unlike Mexican muralism or Japanese ukiyo-e, contemporary Yemeni art isn't defined by a single recognisable style. Instead, it spans everything from conceptual photography to painting and textile-based works, with each artist speaking a completely different visual language. Which means that even though today's list is all about photographers, don't expect anything conventional. Each one pushes the medium in a different direction. So, let's meet them.

If we are talking about Yemen's contemporary artistic legacy, there is one name that is almost impossible to overlook: Alia Ali. In many ways, her practice reflects the diversity of Yemeni art itself: rather than being defined by a single medium or aesthetic, Ali moves effortlessly between photography, textile art, sculpture and installation.

Born to a Yemeni father and a Bosnian mother and raised between several countries, Alia has built her entire practice around one central question: what actually shapes our identity?

Her Yemeni heritage quietly runs through much of her work. Although she sources textiles from cultures around the world, her fascination with them is rooted in Yemen, where embroidery has long communicated far more than style. Historically, it could reveal where someone came from, their social status, tribal affiliation and even aspects of their family history. Alia takes that idea beyond Yemen, using textiles as a universal language of identity rather than simply decoration.

One of her best-known projects, BORDERLAND, has become something of her signature. At its heart lies the question: what happens when we remove the visual cues we rely on to identify one another?

Her answer comes through the portraits themselves: each features a person almost entirely wrapped in carefully selected textiles, leaving little or none of the face visible. By concealing the features we instinctively rely on to identify one another — age, gender, ethnicity or emotion — Alia invites us to confront how quickly we form assumptions before someone has even spoken a single word.

But the work goes far beyond that question. Each fabric wrapped around the subject carries its own cultural history, craftsmanship and symbolism. Across the series, you will spot everything from Uzbek ikat, famous for its blurred geometric patterns, and hand-dyed Javanese batik, to hand-block-printed textiles from Rajasthan, naturally indigo-dyed fabrics from northern Vietnam and, of course, traditional Yemeni textiles. Together, they transform each portrait into something far richer than a photograph — it becomes a conversation about culture.

Boushra Almutawakel is one of Yemen's best-known contemporary photographers, exploring identity, perception and the representation of Muslim and Arab women around the world through her work. Yet rather than making bold statements, she prefers to ask questions, inviting viewers to challenge their own assumptions.

The easiest way to understand her practice is through one of her most famous works, Mother, Daughter, Doll. The series follows a mother, her daughter and a Fulla doll (often described as the Muslim equivalent of Barbie) as they gradually become more covered — moving from colourful everyday clothes to the hijab, then the niqab (face veil), until they finally disappear into a completely black frame.

The photographs sparked divided reactions. Some interpreted them as a criticism of veiling, arguing that the figures' disappearance into black symbolised oppression. Others saw the opposite: a critique of Western stereotypes that reduce Muslim women to what they wear. Almutawakel has repeatedly explained that neither interpretation is the "correct" one. Instead, her aim is to encourage viewers to ask themselves questions: Why do I react so strongly to this image? What assumptions am I making about this woman?

That approach runs through much of her work, including The Hijab Series. Created shortly after the events of 9/11, the project responded to a moment when the hijab had become one of the dominant visual symbols used by international media to represent Islam. A piece of clothing that means different things to different women was increasingly treated as a political statement in itself.

Rather than debating the hijab, Almutawakel shifts the focus to the viewer. Her question is simple: why has a piece of fabric become one of the very first things people notice about a Muslim woman? Through these portraits, she suggests that we have become so preoccupied with what Muslim women wear that we often stop seeing the individual beneath the clothing.

Asiya Al. Sharabi rarely settles for a single medium. Photography? Yes. Painting? Also yes. Printmaking? That too.

Born in Yemen and later relocating to the United States after working there as a photojournalist, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice that reflects her own experience of migration and belonging. Questions of identity, Yemeni heritage and the lives of women aren't simply subjects she documents; they are the foundation on which her work is built.

She has even invented her own photographic process. Called Resino-Pigmentype, it combines photography, painting and printmaking to create richly textured images that blur the line between photograph, artwork and archive — something that immediately distinguishes her practice from almost everyone else working in photography today.

One of her best-known — and perhaps most personal — projects is My Mother's Tender Script. After her mother's death, Al. Sharabi discovered notebooks filled with shopping lists, repeated words and handwritten notes. Widowed as a teenager, her mother had received very little formal education and often expressed herself through these seemingly ordinary fragments of writing. Using her Resino-Pigmentype process, Al. Sharabi embedded the handwriting directly into photographic portraits, transforming the series into both a deeply intimate tribute to her mother and a family archive preserved through art.

While My Mother's Tender Script looks inward, Queen of Sheba expands the conversation to women across Yemen. Inspired by the country's legendary queen, the series doesn't recreate Bilqis herself. Instead, Al. Sharabi photographs contemporary Yemeni women, presenting each as a symbolic modern-day Queen of Sheba. Through them, she asks a question: if Yemen's history celebrates such a remarkable female leader, why are women today so often expected to occupy much narrower roles?

There are photographs you admire, and then there are photographs that make you pause, zoom in and wonder: how on earth was this made? Amr Attamimi's work belongs firmly in the second category — which is exactly why we couldn't leave him off this list.

Entirely self-taught, Amr grew up in a conservative society where not every feeling was easy to express out loud. So he found another way. He works with real people and real places, but what ends up in front of the camera rarely stays grounded in reality. Objects float, bodies transform and impossible moments unfold so naturally that you almost stop questioning them. It is probably no surprise, then, that when he was once asked which artist he would most like to meet, his answer was Salvador Dalí.

One of his best-known series is Lalaland — an imagined world that became a psychological refuge, a place where Amr could exist free from the restrictions he experienced while growing up. As he has described it himself, Lalaland is a deeply personal space, created not to escape reality but to process it.