“Queering Diaspora in Middle Eastern Art: Performing Race and Empire”

This research investigates contemporary art and photography as it pertains to identity narratives of the queer Middle Eastern diaspora in order to study transnational and cross-cultural queerness. I interrogate the performance of identity within photography in order to better investigate decolonial practices and the cultural transformation of aesthetics within Middle Eastern contemporary art being produced by artists from the diaspora. My work interrogates the performance of queerness, the performance of Arabness, and their intersections by reflecting on modern sexual identity, its relationship to colonialism, and how contemporary queer visual artists disrupt linear identity narratives. Focusing on theorizing what queer futurity for the racialized diaspora looks like, this research emphasizes themes of migration, displacement, transnationalism, and examines how queerness is performed within artistic practice and how culturally diverse contemporary artists operate within the context of the West.

As a case study I will analyze the performance art and photography of Montreal-based Moroccan artist 2fik (Toufique). 2Fik is a multidisciplinary artist who uses his own diasporic identity as a subject in his work to explore the dichotomies of his Moroccan-Canadian culture and his lived experience as a queer Arab. Using performance and photography as his primary modes of art production, 2Fik invents multifaceted characters that transform and translate different aspects of his cultural and sexual identity. His visual art provides a level of depth in investigating diasporic art production and strategies that allow him to navigate critiques of Empire, geographic borders, geopolitics, and decolonial aesthetics.