Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia and North Africa

Artists with connections to or within the geographic region of Southwest Asia North Africa (SWANA) have created art that reflects queer expressions: the rejection, alteration, or challenging of social norms that prioritize heterosexuality and normative gender roles. Queer art practices are not limited to a specific medium. Queer art spans performance, painting, installation, photography, video, sculpture, fiber arts, drawing, mixed media practices, and more.
Artists across SWANA and the diaspora have been exploring and reconciling the relationship between their queer and SWANA identities. The geographic region of Southwest Asia North Africa is also referred to as the Middle East and North Africa, the Middle East or Islamicate world. The term SWANA describes the region by the areas of the continents it spans, rather than positioning the region in relation to Europe or North America (as with the term Middle East). and Chaza Charafeddine have explored articulations of non-normative gender expression in historical Islamic art, particularly through , the genderless human-headed flying steed that carried the Prophet Muhammad on his night journey. Kasem's Sweat Until I am Soaked (2022), a sculpture composed of three colorful Buraqs with her own face attached to them, serves as a commentary on finding space for her own identity as a queer Muslim to exist in the open. In Charafeddine's works, the head of al Buraq is always a portrait of a feminine individual. By incorporating various gendered interpretations of al Buraq into her pieces, Charafeddine reinforces the idea of the liminal creature as a symbol of "in-betweenness" Queer curation is a practice that "places queerness at the centre of its curatorial framework" with the aim of rejecting the heteronormative status quo of Western curatorial tradition. He disrupts preconceived notions of the treatment of gender norms and identity expression in 1950s-1970s South Lebanon. Although the creation of these images at the time may not fully reflect cultural attitudes towards queer individuals, their existence pushes back against the idea that queerness in the Arab world is a much more recent phenomenon. Bassem Feghali, a popular Lebanese comedian in the 1990s and 2000s, is considered to be a trailblazer in the Arab drag scene with his female celebrity impersonations. Because of the importance of performance and extravagance in Lebanese culture, Feghali was met with praise across generations. Queer friendly bars that host drag shows and other queer events are largely considered the Lebanese queer community's safe space. The up-and-coming Lebanese drag scene gives queer performance artists a safer and more legitimate place to be able to explore intersections between their Arab and queer identities through drag performance. Palestinian drag artists used performance spaces as a way to resist Zionist "exotification" of Palestinian bodies and condemn Palestinian society's perception of people existing outside of a conservative conception of the gender binary.'s I Only Read About Myself on Bathroom Walls portrays a queer intimacy through the photographing of written statements and interactions on bathroom stalls.'s photos Not Afraid to Love, Paris, 2005 and What Have We Done Wrong, Cairo, 1993 both feature similar compositions: two men resting in an interior domestic space yet the position of the figures in each piece coupled with the title that include location (Paris and Cairo) illustrate diaspora as having a tangible effect on local sexuality scripts.
Artists
This list came from intensive research using scholarly articles on art history in the Islamic world, but it is by no means an exhaustive list. The purpose of this list is to present the diversity of the queer artists of SWANA and provide a framework through which viewers can interact with and understand the works. This helps to understand the aesthetics, themes, and techniques used by some of the artists contributing to the queer art of SWANA. It also provides insight as to the diverse range of backgrounds these artists have, and the different socio-political environments they're working in. This isn't an attempt to define the boundaries of this field, but rather to offer an overview of the work that's being done in this under-represented field of study.
* Chaza Charafeddine is an artist and writer born in Tyre, Lebanon in 1964. Charafeddine's work explores identity, heritage and memory. In his work Nabil explores issues of queerness, memory, and exile. Assali's series proposes the setting of the restroom as an extratemporal space where queer individuals meet and interact. The series title reflects Assali's exploration of how queer identity is relegated to secretive spaces. Kasem creates large-scale dyed fabric works to represent these characters and stories, reinserting queerness/foregrounding queerness in the historical narrative.
* Omar Gabriel is a Lebanese photographer and director working in Beirut where he's an active member of the queer community. His work combines elements of fashion, photography, and dressing up (often in drag) to interrogate the socially enforced taboos, especially sexual taboos like homosexuality. is a queer, transgender Jordanian theatre artist, activist, and documentary playwright who is responsible for creating the first Arab transgender play, She He Me, about three Arabs subverting gender norms, facing a journey with much hardship and comedy.
Exhibitions
Hashem El Madani, co-curated by Akram Zaatari, has been exhibited at the in London in 2004 The exhibition showcases El Madani's studio photography work in South Lebanon from the early 1950s to mid-1970s. His work centers around depicting everyday life in the region and includes numerous images depicting gender non-conforming individuals and queer intimacy. While the inclusion of such images may not necessarily reflect the reality of local attitudes towards queer individuals, scholars nonetheless regard them as a portrayal of "aspirational enactments of queer belonging."
Queer-y-ing the Arab was an exhibition curated by the Earl of Bushwick held at Apexart in Manhattan, New York in 2021. The exhibition "explores queerness through an Arab perspective" and generally interprets queerness as any non-normative expression, not necessarily referring to sexuality. The show includes Jamil Hellu's Be my guest installation, Rima Nadji's a video performance This house is virtuous and will always remain virtuous, and works by Queer Habibi, an anonymous Arab queer art collective. Artists featured in this show include Aïcha Snoussi, Alireza Shojaian, Kubra Khademi, Chaza Charafeddine, Sido Lansari, Khaled Takreti, Lalla Rami, and Sultana.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu