Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa
Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa (Book)
Presents new perspectives on queer visual culture in the Southwest Asia North Africa region from artists and scholars. The volume focuses on artworks produced in the contemporary era while recognizing historical and contextual connections to regional and Islamic art and culture. 48 b&w illus.
Free sample: Introduction - Beyond Borders and Binaries
Edition
Presents new perspectives on queer visual culture in the Southwest Asia North Africa region from queer artists as well as scholars who work on queer themes. With contributions from both scholars and artists, this volume demonstrates that queer visual culture in the SWANA region is not only extant, but is also entering an era of exciting growth in terms of its versatility and consciousness. The volume focuses on artworks produced in the contemporary era while recognizing historical and contextual connections to Islamic art and culture within
localities and regions from the pre-modern and modern eras.
By framing this volume as unambiguously located within queer studies, the editors challenge existing literature that merely includes some examples of queer studies or queer representation, but does not necessarily use queer studies as a lens through which to engage with visual culture and/or with the SWANA region. Through four interrelated sections - Gender and Normativity, Trans* Articulations, Intersectional Sexuality, and Queer SWANA - this volume probes several previously unexplored academic areas, namely the intersections of queer studies with other fields.
Part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series.
Anne Marie Butler is assistant professor of art history and women, gender and sexuality at Kalamazoo College, Michigan, USA. Her scholarship focuses on contemporary Tunisian art with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, and the state.
Sascha Crasnow is assistant professor of art history at Drake University, USA. Her work centers on contemporary art from the SWANA region with a particular focus on critical race theory, gender, and sexuality.
Foreword: Queer Aesthetics, Opacity, Relationality
Gayatri Gopinath
Introduction: Beyond Borders and Binaries
Anne Marie Butler and Sascha Crasnow
Part I: Unfixed Genders
1. The Reawakening of the Belly Dancer and Queer Revolution
Raed Rafei
2. On Private Lives in Public Spaces
Yasmine Nasser Diaz
3. Futurist Androgynes, Persian Ironies:; Aan Iinterview with Rah Eleh
Proshot Kalami
4. Transing Contemporary Art: Aïcha Snoussi and Khaled Jarrar
Anne Marie Butler and Sascha Crasnow
Part II: Intersectional Sexualities
5. The When, Where, and Why of Intimacy: Codes of Coupling in Egyptian Contemporary Art
Andrew Gayed
6. The Vicissitudes of Self: Storytelling, Queerness, and Muslim Identity
Yasmine K. Kasem
7. I Only Read About Myself on Bathroom Walls and “On Behalf Of: I am an Ottoman but in Name Only”
Qais Assali
8. Out on Display: A Queer Negotiation of Identity and Anonymity in Diaspora
Dylan Volk
9. Of the Confused Memory: Conor Moynihan in Conversation with Mehdi-George Lahlou
Conor Moynihan and Mehdi-Georges Lahlou
Part III: Sites and Spaces
10. Subverting the Script: Queer Domesticity in Nilbar Güreş’s Works
Duygu Oya Ula
11. Heart to Heart: Baseera Khan in Conversation with Yasmine K. Kasem
Baseera Khan and Yasmine K. Kasem
12. Queer Heavens: Rethinking the Islamic Garden in Contemporary Art
Charlotte Bank
13. Viscosities of the known and the unknown بين الماء وبين النار
Gaïa Khalil and Aïcha Snoussi
14. Sa’dia Rehman’s Queer Cartographies: Convivial Opacities
Natasha Bissonauth
Notes on Contributors
Index
