Queer Modernities and Diasporic Art of the Middle East
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______________________________ QUEER MODERNITIES AND DIASPORIC ART OF THE MIDDLE EAST ________________________________ ANDREW GAYED A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ART HISTORY AND VISUAL CULTURE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA SCHOOL OF ART, MEDIA, PERFORMANCE AND DESIGN MARCH 2020 ©Andrew Gayed, 2020 ii ABSTRACT ___________________ This thesis investigates Middle Eastern diasporic artists in North America who are creating political art about queer identity. This doctoral project explores colonial contact zones to discuss queer identity in relation to politically motivated art being produced by the Middle Eastern diaspora and provides nuance and contributes to the growing scholarship on Middle Eastern contemporary art and cultural studies. I consider whether social scientists, cultural theorists, and historians can reach a narrative of Western and non-Western Modernity that works beyond sexual oppression (Middle East) versus sexual acceptance (North America), and instead examines a negotiation of diasporic sexuality. Arguing instead that diasporic subjects create an alternative coming-out narrative and identity script to inscribed Western models, the aim is to see the ways in which local instances of homosociality cite pre-Modern sexuality scripts within contemporary Middle Eastern art and its diaspora, and reject Western queer identity narratives that become exclusionary in non-Western contexts. By incorporating different sociological strategies in the analysis of contemporary art, this research strives to make self-identification categories less dichotomous and more expansive. This doctoral thesis examines how the artworks of Arab artists in the diaspora illustrate diasporic queer identities that are different from the global-to-local homocolonialism of Western gay identity, and provides examples of how local networks of identity are transmitted through visual language and how alternative sexuality scripts are written within transnational contexts. Examining the artworks of diasporic contemporary artists Jamil Hellu, Ebrin Bagheri, and 2fik (Toufique), I explore the concept of multiple Modernisms and their relationship to displacement, trauma, and Arab sexualities/masculinities within a postcolonial and anti-imperialist framework. Jamil Hellu uses photography, video, performance, and mixed-media art installations to create contrasting metaphors about the politics of cultural identities and the fluidity of sexuality. iii Ebrin Bagheri’s ink and paper drawings evoke histories of pre-modern, same-sex desires in Iranian culture. 2Fik uses his own diasporic identity as a subject in his work to explore the dichotomies of his Canadian-Moroccan culture and his lived experience as a queer Arab. Global art histories and transnational queer theory are pillars of my theoretical framework, and a postcolonial approach is instrumental in locating contemporary notions of sexual discourse in the Middle East. Such a postcolonial framework illuminates the necessary cause-and-effect relationship that historic sexuality discourses have had on contemporary understandings of sexuality, and how this history affects those currently living in the diaspora. I explore Middle Eastern homosexuality and focus on issues of Modernity, multiple Modernisms, and the West’s claim to Modernity. Histories of multiple Modernisms are evidence of modernity as a period of industrialized and economic growth taking place outside the Global North, and this concept is a critical approach to queer theory and art history in its capacity to decenter European humanist thought that universalized Western progress as the only mode of cultural advancement. This discussion will reframe Arab homosexualities in terms of desire and alternative masculinities rather than through Western notions of visibility and coming out, as these narratives are not conducive to understanding how queer Arabs living in the West experience their sexuality. iv AKNOWLEDGEMENTS ____________________ I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for supporting my doctoral research, and awarding me the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. I would like to thank the generous funding from various bodies at York University, including the School of Art, Media, Performance and Design, the York Centre for Asian Research, the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, and the Faculty of Graduate Studies. It is by their generous support that I was funded to present this research at conferences before Canadian audiences, as well as internationally at Harvard University, University of California Berkeley, St. Petersburg State University, and the Salzburg International Academy of Fine Arts. I would like to thank the adjudication committee at York University for awarding me the distinguished Provost Dissertation Scholarship for an outstanding doctoral project, and the provincial adjudication committee for awarding me the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Notably, the School of Art, Media, Performance and Design, as well as the incredible faculty within the Visual Art department truly encouraged me to develop and grow this research to its highest potential, and I am grateful to them for supporting me and believing in my work. I would like to acknowledge my loving partner, Mathieu Bélanger, for providing support and encouragement throughout the entire journey of this graduate degree. Your patience, love, and humor enabled me to complete this dissertation, and you pushed me to always do my best. We have achieved many milestones during the course of this doctorate, and the completion of this degree will be the next of many more to come. A special thank you to the two members of my PhD cohort, Siobhan Angus and Vanessa Nicholas, who were foundational to my success in this program. Thank you for reading more drafts of this dissertation than I can count, and for your endless support, v generosity and love that helped get us through to the finish line. I would also like to thank Dr. Danielle Blab for her kindness and generosity in editing this dissertation, and for her friendship over the years. Foremost, I would like to thank my incredible supervisory committee, Dr. Hong Kal, Dr. Amar Wahab, and Dr. Ming Tiampo. Through their mentorship, they devoted their time to fostering my research, and helped me grow as a scholar and researcher. Collectively they so generously supported my project, and worked enthusiastically with me to encourage and grow this research, helping me get the most out of my graduate degree. I would like to thank them for believing in me, and for providing incredible mentorship along this journey. I would like to express my appreciation to my external reader, Dr. Gayatri Gopinath from New York University’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality for her support during the defense of my thesis. Also, a thank you to Dr. Jessica Mace for being the chair of my defense committee, and a thank you to Dr. Zulfikar Hirji for being the outside member on my defense committee. It is by the generosity of these individuals that my research was made possible, and I am truly grateful to have been supported so encouragingly throughout the tenure of my graduate research at York University. vi Table of Contents LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .................................................................................................................... VII PROLOGUE ............................................................................................................................................. IX AUTO-THEORY: A QUEER FEMINIST PRACTICE INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 1 QUEERING LOCALLY AND DEIMPERIALIZING VISUAL CULTURE CHAPTER ONE ...................................................................................................................................... 53 TRAUMA AND THE SINGLE NARRATIVE: READING ARAB ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY CHAPTER TWO ...................................................................................................................................... 85 DECOLONIAL METHODS: THE ISLAMICATE AS FRAMEWORK CHAPTER THREE ................................................................................................................................ 106 AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY: DIASPORA CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE QUEER DIASPORIC LENS CHAPTER FOUR .................................................................................................................................. 137 QUEERING ARCHIVES OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LINKING A COLONIAL HISTORY TO A DIASPORIC PRESENT CHAPTER FIVE .................................................................................................................................... 167 COMING OUT A L’ORIENTAL: DIASPORIC ART AND COLONIAL WOUNDS CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................... 195 QUEERING LOCALLY, DIASPORA CONSCIOUSNESS, AND FUTURITY APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................................ 206 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................. 220 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS __________________ (Figure