Nadia Sheikh

Fragments of Becoming

Photography, Memory, and Intergenerational Dialogue in the Somali Yemeni Diaspora

What can a daughter learn about her mother through photographs taken long before she was born? Fragments of Becoming is an ongoing photographic and archival project that begins with a box of family photographs spanning the years before and during migration. Returning to these images, I encounter a version of my mother I never knew: a young woman, a student, a sister, a friend, moving through the world with dreams, uncertainties, and freedoms that often remain invisible within the role of “mother.”

Rather than treating these photographs as historical evidence, I approach them as sites ofencounter. Each image becomes an invitation to look closer, to ask questions, and to enter conversations that might otherwise remain unspoken. Through the family archive, I explore themes of migration, memory, faith, womanhood, care, and belonging, while reflecting on the tensions and connections between my mother’s life and my own as a daughter raised in the Somali-Yemeni diaspora in the Netherlands. The project unfolds through photographs, archival materials, personal reflections, and dialogue. In doing so, the archive shifts from a static record of the past into a living space where memories are revisited, challenged, and reimagined. The images reveal not only what has been preserved, but also what has been forgotten, omitted, or left unsaid.

At its core, Fragments of Becoming is about the space that exists between generations. It asks how photography can function as a form of listening, and how family photographs might become a language through which mothers and daughters encounter one another anew. Through these fragments, I seek not a complete portrait of my mother, but a deeper understanding of how her history continues to shape my own becoming