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.

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 a lecturer of Islamic Arts in the Residential College at the University of Michigan, USA. Her work centers on contemporary art from the SWANA region with a particular focus on critical race theory, gender, and sexuality.

Foreword
   Gayatri Gopinath

Introduction
   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”
   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

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 Kknown and the Uunknown بين الماء وبين النار
   Gaïa Khalil and Aïcha Snoussi

14. Sa’dia Rehman’s Queer Cartographies: Convivial Opacities
   Natasha Bissonauth

Notes on Contributors

Index

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