“Atlas Aesthetics was born from a desire to reclaim our visual culture and tell our own stories. I want to platform it, celebrate it and really get it out there – a narrative that is rooted in the region and its global diasporas.” Founder and editor-in-chief, Assia Sabi, is talking to us about the motivation behind her new magazine centering North African creativity.

It’s this spirit of reclamation and disruption that sees the magazine have its launch at Oddity, in the buzzy 3rd arrondissement, right in the middle of Paris Fashion Week, an event that has famously lacked representation from the North African talent in the city. “I was obsessed with fashion magazines when I was growing up in Paris in the late 90s, early 2000s,” remembers Sabi. “Did I see anyone from my culture on the cover of anything? There's a huge North African community in Paris and in France so now that I’m older, it feels important to do something about it. We're so proud of our culture and I love it.”

What she’s chosen to do about it is uniquely beautiful. Atlas Aesthetics hails the region in all of its rich diversity and glorious complexity. “I wanted to create a platform to celebrate our culture away from the Western gaze, very much rooted in our people,” Sabi says. “Away from any reductive boxes that we can be put into and really make that space for creatives to show their identity through arts or film or fashion photography in a way that is entirely up to them.”

She adds that this freedom of expression takes on myriad forms: “It’s about showing the diversity of North African culture, which a lot of people don’t appreciate. Of course, the magazine can't cover every subculture, but we’re trying to do as much as we can because things are always growing and adapting. North African culture is known for the camels and the belly dancers and, okay, yes, we do have that, but we are so much more.”

Sabi was born in Paris to an Algerian father and French mother, and now splits her time between London, Paris and Marrakech. She’s embedded in the contemporary art scenes of all three cities where she’s constantly encountering inspiring talents to collaborate with. “I was working with a few art galleries in the region over the past couple of years, discovering more and more artists, and really being wowed,” she says. Now that energy is channeled into Atlas Aesthetics, which gives a visual home to both third culture kids and North Africans on the continent. With pages full of rich storytelling, you’ll find an interview with self-proclaimed “Halal/Haram cocktail” Kenza Taleb Vandeput of Kazbah Kosmic, Kenza Bousseloub’s photography capturing Algerian street life and an exploration and decolonisation of Egyptian beauty standards by Mary Isak.

Anchoring the issue are two ambitious cover stories, one shot in Tunisia and the other, Morocco. The former, ‘At the Hajema’ by photographer Ghalia Kriaa, captures all the feelings of a neighbourhood hair salon, while the latter, Sophia El Bahja’s portraits of musician El Mehdi, are at once soft and bold. “Creating the magazine has been a great way to connect with other people who are going through the same thing as me – growing up in a Western country, being from North Africa – but it’s also very important to have an audience on the continent itself. That’s why we did our first two covers on the continent, with creatives from there. We’re not just talking to the global diaspora.”

This radically honest reflection couldn't be more important or urgent. With far-right politics on the rise, as well as Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment, it’s vital for audiences in the Global North to grasp the complexity and beauty of the region. “There’s a perception that our culture is stuck in the past but people are reimagining and reinterpreting it in this contemporary way. And, that's what I want to show – that it’s modern, that Islam is a beautiful, rich, complex, loving religion, and so is all culture in North Africa.”