“My first loyalty is to the audience and then my second is the subject, or maybe simultaneously those two, and because I make work for the audience in the Emirates, I’m talking about people living in the country, so I saw this as an opportunity to talk about something that was maybe a little bit more about my background,” explains @christopherjoshuabenton. “It was things that I immediately could relate to and didn’t necessarily have to research a lot, and that was pretty exciting. My work is about working-class people and how they fight neoliberal and corporate forces through creating culture. This work is about how it is commodified, while intersecting with ideas of identity, and how people of colour create spaces online, how they express themselves and how does that expression get filtered through the greater cultural apparatus and become a trend, viral content and eventually even clothing.” Photo by Ron John @__ronjohn PUBLISHER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR MARNE SCHWARTZ @marnelenoir EDITORIAL DIRECTOR ALISON TAY @thestyleeditor EDITOR IN CHIEF OLIVIA PHILLIPS @oliviaphillipsbazaar EDITOR AYESHA S. SHEHMIR @ayeshasohail_ ART DIRECTORS OSCAR YANEZ @oyanezwork AND CATE WARDE WORDS DEVINDER BAINS @devinderbains ARTIST CHRISTOPHER JOSHUA BENTON @christopherjoshuabenton