ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an analysis of Middle Eastern diasporic conditions through a focus on queer diasporic art and identity. By engaging with the visual art of diasporic artists Jamil Hellu, Laurence Rasti and Nilbar Güreş, the analysis sheds light on the immense violence and trauma that queer and trans subjects face in the Middle East and the diaspora. Studying the cultural production of the queer diaspora is fruitful in that it helps to rethink normative political categories around diaspora and explores non-Western ways of being queer that are informed by diaspora consciousness and work beyond the clichés of sexual oppression in the Middle East versus sexual acceptance in North America. The argument contends that these artistic expressions and compositions from a broadly defined Islamicate queer diaspora offer disruptive readings of both homocolonialism and homonationalism.
