What Is Joy? 

So many great works of art begin with stirring orders to joy, to give into it immediately. From Rumi’s poetry to the words of Mirza Ghalib and Mary Oliver, joy often comes in a simple refrain to not avoid its plentitude when it arrives, even when fleeting. As Oliver writes, “Joy is not made to be a crumb.” 

At first, it can be odd to ask after something like joy during a time like ours. We can feel misplaced in its quest—rage is often the more fitting palliative. Even the impulse to prefix joy – with caveats of how inconsolable it is today – is an admission of its finitude. We tend to speak of joy as something we must buy or fight over, as if it were a commodity for only a few; we think of it through frames of hierarchy. How much is missed with such a narrow view? What kind of love are we refusing, and how can we then really see ourselves and the world? 

Joy is chaotic and persistent: a day with best friends, the slow work of ikebana, a pirouette, a body, silly little girls’ trips, escape, your grandmother’s texts inviting you to gather, surrender, or drenching your insides with a homemade meal. These responses dance through this editorial lightly and with deep sincerity, enough to reinforce joy neither as a greedy desire nor the antithesis of rage but an endless presence sluicing through instances all the time. 

Mona Mostafa — Fashion Designer

Joy is witnessing moments that exist completely outside of performance or expectation. Children have a way of reminding us that connection matters more than outcome; that sometimes the most important thing happening in a crowded world is simply finding someone’s hand. 

Êvar Huseynî — Artist and archivist

My dad taught me that joy is revolutionary, that every moment of joy is a small uprising and future rehearsed. A way of practising what a different world might feel like before it fully exists. Many political narratives place joy at the end of the story: first liberation, then joy. It’s treated like a reward—something we gain in the after, after an achievement, after a triumph. Joy, however, is what makes liberation imaginable in the first place. Joy is so powerful, stubborn, loud, and intimate that regardless of our burning world, it’s still present in everyday forms of collective life, human and non-human. It does not displace grief but coexists with it. Joy is water and bread split between us.

Lydia Pang — Author and creative director

“Ease, simplicity, tenderness. Enduring the patience and pause of the liminal. Stirring a pot of ugly, brown, delicious food and then drenching your insides with it. Savoured silence and surrender.”

Sarahbelle Kim — Cultural Commentator

“Fellowship! Idling in the grass with your friends, putting on hats. A flower, a rusting fence, things to jump over. The spectacular. The mundane. Trespassing beautifully with a love note tucked under your arm. The scene in Wings of Desire when the angel tries his first cup of coffee. It’s dazzling, being a person in community”

On a Downward Spiral — Meme account

“Joy is a day by the creek, with people or by myself.”

Sarah Al Rashid — Curator and founder of @objectsobjectsobjectsobjects 

“Joy is being surrounded by your friends and realising your silly little girl trips are forever.”

Zaid Sami — Artist and graphic designer

“Joy, for me, is doing what I used to dream about as a kid. I’d look at Arabic signs and wonder if I’d ever create something like that. Now, I’m making typography in my own artistic way and people are relating to what I create. I’ve also met amazing people along this journey; I consider them my closest friends, almost like family. Doing what I love and sharing it makes me feel content.”

Ranim Halaky — Designer and Artist

Joy is a brief encounter with life amid chaos.

Like these two boys swimming through the turbulent sea, off the rocky coast of Beirut. Laughter carried by the wind, their bodies surrendering to the sea while the water swells and breaks around them. Equally important, beyond the frame, the constant hum of the drone lingers overhead, unheard in the image yet impossible to ignore. For a moment, their play suspends everything else.

In moments when the world feels fractured, joy appears as a brief opening. It does not erase uncertainty or hardship; it exists alongside them. Fleeting, yet precious, it reminds us that life persists—not despite chaos, but within it.

Haru Nemuri — Japanese singer-songwriter

“Joy, to me, means the aliveness I feel through creating something—whether it’s new songs or everyday cooking.”

Melancholy Asylum — Meme account 

“Escapism. Perhaps the only thing I enjoy now is eating old Syrian snacks and watching shows/movies that I kinda forgot about—I escape everything for an hour or two.”

Prarthna Singh — Artist

“In a world where we are surrounded by insurmountable grief, where finding joy feels harder with each passing day, I try to seek it in tender, everyday moments. This photograph of my mother lying in her garden during her daily practice and meditation ritual brings me a special kind of sukoon, a Hindustani word we use to describe a deep sense of tranquillity and peace. Seeing her in this almost surreal state, surrounded by her beloved lilies and a home she pours so much love into, is my definition of joy.”

Tamara Tsehai Tesfai — Photographer

“Let me introduce you to my dear friends Kendal, Grace, and Mo. This image was taken after a night out celebrating Grace’s birthday. Earlier that evening, we gathered at her apartment before migrating to the Metrograph to watch Millennium Mambo. Walking out of the cinema after the rain, it felt like we were in the film. Vicky drifts through Taipei’s nightlife, blurring memory and the present through fleeting pleasures, endless nights, and the melancholy of knowing these moments will one day exist only as memories. We carried this feeling back to Kendal’s and my apartment. We smoked, drank, danced, and lingered until dawn. Looking at this image now, I realise that joy is knowing a night will become a memory and cherishing it anyway.”

Zara Khan — Architect

“I experience true joy when I make things, especially when the act requires me to move slowly with intention. This past year, it has been ikebana. When your hands are moving, and your mind goes quiet, you reach a flow state where you are making subconscious micro decisions that ripple one after the other. It’s the feeling of being completely absorbed in something you care about. You have to allow yourself to play and experiment without knowing what comes next. Without that joy, making becomes performance. With it, even the most fleeting and imperfect thing you create feels enough.”

Kelly Shami — Artist

“Joy is a creative sanctuary, a place where ideas find their form and the outside world grows quiet.”

Mujahid Jamal — Founder of Sard Visuals

“Joy is that strange moment when the body forgets its weight. A small surrender. A private electricity. It can arrive dressed as fear, movement, colour, or laughter before you understand why. It’s not always clean or graceful. Sometimes, it is absurd, fast, and slightly out of control. For a second, the world loosens its grip and something inside you rises before it falls. Joy is that brief, impossible feeling of being carried by something larger than yourself.”

Rohan Golestani — Architect and designer

“Recently, I reread the last text messages from my grandmother. They were rarely about herself. Instead, they ranged from ‘Come for dinner’ and ‘Tell everyone I love them’ to ‘Make time for the family’ and ‘I miss you’. Even a simple ‘Love my darling grandson’ is something I hold close now. Her joy seemed to come from gathering loved ones around a table, holding them in her prayers when they were far away, and making sure no one ever doubted they were loved. I hope to carry that legacy forward.”

The Collective Library — Resource sharing space and cultural platform 

“It’s difficult to define joy at this time. You can find things that make you smile or make your heart feel hugged, yet the reality of our world makes joy feel fragmented. While looking through our library for something that might respond to this feeling, we found Rie Qudan’s Sympathy Tower Tokyo, a book that carried the feeling of joy all the way to its final page. The story follows architect Sara Machina as she designs a tower for prisoners, built on the belief that empathy towards those shaped by a broken system could alter the pattern of criminality and reflect what society is facing now—a shy sense of joy in the broken world we live in. Read the book!” 

Zhamak Fullad — Photographer and director

“A day with my best friends.”

Bader AlSaad — Curator and storyteller

“For years, I thought joy was something to pursue. The older I get, the more I realise it arrives quietly in the simplest of moments: watching a sunset by the sea, a warm hug from a friend, making something with my hands, sharing a meaningful conversation, or witnessing people connect through art. Joy is not found in abundance, achievement, or constant excitement. For me, it lives in gratitude. It is the practice of noticing what is already present, appreciating it before it passes, and recognising the beauty in what many would consider ordinary.”

Lulua Alyahya — Artist 

“Surrender.”

Nis Hamid — Curator and artist 

“My joy is embodied… in motion. It is a deep plié, grounding me in the present. It is the ease of my chest expanding, releasing with every exhale. Joy is the spring in my steps, the lightness of my jetés. My joy is a pirouette. Even in stillness, its momentum persists.”

Safa El Samad — Designer

“I think of joy the same way I think of sorrow. Kahlil Gibran said that the two are inseparable: ‘When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.’ I made this broken skateboard artwork at a time when I was feeling a lot of grief and sorrow.”