As seen by queer Muslims
Wide range of experiences in pioneering group show
There is a space at the heart of “The Third Muslim” reserved for Numair Abbasi, a Pakistani artist whose art frequently includes nude male bodies. His work, however, does not hang there. Instead, there exists only a thin gold frame surrounding a note against a background of bright teal. The note informs viewers that Abbasi’s work, which was to be part of a group exhibition by queer, transgender and gender-nonconforming Muslim artists at SOMArts Cultural Center, was confiscated by Pakistani authorities just days before the show was set to open. “Attempts at state control and repression, whether overt or
latent, speak directly to the mandate of artists and curators to amplify acts of created resistance within the US and within diaspora.”
The blank space, then, serves as a sober reminder for why the show is so necessary — and so overdue. As the curators put it, queer Muslims “continue to occupy margins within the margins.”
“Without meaning to, it has grounded the space in another unfortunate aspect of this reality,” says Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who curated the show with Yas Ahmed.
“The Third Muslim” is a considerable undertaking by Ali Bhutto and Ahmed. They’ve assembled work by 14 artists “ranging from Syrian to Somali to Pakistani heritage,” to examine the complex identity that they both claim. Very intentionally, there is no manifesto, or single viewpoint for the show — which is, as far as Ali Bhutto can tell, the first group show of its kind. Instead, they allow the varied experiences in a very specific community speak for themselves.
“We haven’t all experienced queerness in the same way and we haven’t all experienced Islam in the same way,” Ali Bhutto says.
This is immediately obvious in the exhibition. Some of the first works visitors see are Samra Habib’s photographic portraits of people who identify as queer Muslims. Her images are spare, unpretentious in their direction. She offers up individuals as they are, eyes looking at the viewer, their faces, styles, ages, skin colors all different.
The series began some years ago, after Habib grew tired of the way Muslim narratives were being portrayed in the media. She had worked as a journalist and saw photography as “a very powerful language and a very accessible language.”
“I didn’t want to editorialize people’s experience because they’re so different,” she says by phone from Toronto. “The project reflects the diversity that exists in Islam.” Since her project began, she’s seen the voices of queer Muslims increase and grow louder. This show is something of a marker of that. “It’s refreshing,” she says. “It’s the beginning of something really great.”
The exhibition does take care to show that queer Muslims have been making art that centers on their identities for decades now. Ali Bhutto and Ahmed wanted to make it clear they weren’t starting from scratch.
Parisa Parnian, an Iranian American artist, shows some visual work as well as pieces of ephemera from a performance she did following the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City, addressing and lampooning the deep xenophobia she felt in the aftermath. “We had people like Parisa to build from,” Ali Bhutto says.
There is a diversity on display that you wouldn’t experience in most gallery settings. The show embraces the complicated questions of Muslim identity (whether that be religious, cultural or political), colorism and anti-blackness and the ways in which they mark the lives of certain Muslims and, then, also geography. Queer Muslims living in the United States, of course, are making very different art than those living abroad in Muslim-majority countries.
Abdullah Qureshi, a Pakistani artist living in Helsinki, says he “couldn’t help but notice that the burqa was a dominant image appearing in the show.” Indeed, there are burqas that blow in the wind, burqas made out of denim and other whimsical materials, and photographs of women clad in burqas surrounded by wilderness.
His work is considerably different. He offers up watercolors of nude or nearly nude men, all of whom he knew and who posed for him in his studio in Lahore. They’re more overtly sexual than many of the other pieces. But it’s also true that the men are anonymous in the images, their bodies something close to silhouettes. If the names are revealed, it’s only done so in the titles of the pieces, but more often they carry winking phrases like “The Sent Nude” or “Selfie I.”
The anonymity is partly aesthetic — a function of working with watercolors — but Qureshi also says, “It’s something I’m working with and playing with because there are things about this identity that cannot be openly talked about in Pakistan.” The overt sexuality is important for the same reason.
Including views from the various parts of the Muslim diaspora was an important part of the show for Ahmed and Ali Bhutto. “It’s representing the plurality of experiences that even queer and trans Muslims aren’t aware of,” Ahmed says.
So far, the feedback to the exhibition has been very positive. Already Ahmed and Ali Bhutto have plans (and a grant) for another show next year. They want to take the concepts to other cities and other communities, highlight local artists and see what that reveals about place and experience.
“The thing that strikes me the most at this point,” says Ahmed, “is that it’s a living, breathing thing.”