Audiovisual research installation

with Mohamad Abdouni, Antoine Idier, Abdellah Taïa, Alireza Sojaian & Akram Zaatari.
Drawings by Soufiane Ababri.

Opening on August 20, 2020 at 19:00 with a discussion at 20:00 between
Julian Volz, Antoine Idier and Soufiane Ababri

Until the early 20th century, unlike any other region in European imagination, the Arabic-speaking world was associated with male homoeroticism. Through their writings and travels, intellectuals such as André Gide and Oscar Wilde contributed to establishing the "Orient" as a place of gay longing. While these imaginations still resonate, the Arabic-speaking world today is usually marked as deeply homophobic. Much less present in the West are the testimonies of homosexual struggles for emancipation and a lively queer culture that is sometimes lived more openly and sometimes more covertly. These struggles persist in contrast to the ostracism and criminalization of same-sex desire introduced by the former colonial powers and promoted by Islamist movements.

What cultural practices do queers develop in Arab societies today? How did it come to be that the "Orient" was considered sexualized, lascivious, decadent and effeminate in an epoch when a repressive sexual regime still prevailed in Europe, and today, in times of repressive desublimation, is mainly characterized as prudish, patriarchal, virile and backward? How could a queer culture be constituted that insists on universal liberation from heteropatriarchal structures, but does not only resort to strategies developed in Western societies?

The video installation Mithly sees itself as a contribution to answering these questions. On the one hand, it deals with orientalist fantasies about homosexuality and examines the role of same-sex desire in the construction of two supposedly incommensurable and hierarchically ordered cultural spaces. On the other hand, insights are provided into the positions of artists from the region itself who confidently counter these orientalist approaches with their own queer visual practice.

Additionally new drawings from the series "bedworks" by the Moroccan artist Soufiane Ababri will be on view. In his "bedworks" Ababri deconstructs images of masculinity and examines the power relations between Arab and European men in the gay subculture.

An Installation by Julian Volz

Camera, Sound, Editing: Yann Ducreux

The exhibition is supportet by Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur and Kulturamt Frankfurt

Synnika
NIKA.haus
Niddastraße 57
60329 Frankfurt am Main

Regular opening times: Fridays 3-6 pm and by appointment from August 21 to November 15.
synnika@nika.haus, 01778389891