insaniyat:

Imagine a dream.
Eyes closed, Mouths open, as if in a dream. Standing facing us with their backs to the darkness, they sing, soundless; they have been standing here, singing for themselves for a long time, imagining us, hearing. Standing, facing days of tedium, facing a world that has adorned them with a false crown.
Standing, waiting.

For ‘Listen’, a project inspired by Newsha Tavakolian’s childhood dream to become a singer, she made six studio portraits of professional women singers, who are not allowed to sing solo, perform in public or produce CD’s in Iran because of Islamic tenets.

Inspired by her feelings about her society, she made six extra images, which are also imaginary album covers with titles for the singers. As a statement, the CD cases are left empty.

The works are accompanied by a video installation with silent clips of the women singers performing. 

Check out the rest of the collection here via azaadi

(Source: , via globalvoices)

I have found The One – performance 25 March 2011 

amira.h.’s performance, The One, is an act of rebellion. Raised as a Muslim, much of amira.h.’s adolescence was spent thinking about, talking about, and fighting about the issue of marriage. Now, at age twenty-seven, these same issues are still making their presence felt in her life-the contradictory life of an unmarried queer Muslim visual artist. Intrigued with instruction and ritual, as well as testing the limits of the body and how much it can endure, amira.h. presents herself, alone, as both bride and groom performing one of the rituals of marriage.

Exorcising a tradition that will not take place in her life, the solitary figure portrays a sense of mourning, pathos and loneliness, with the end result being strangely celebratory. amira.h. invites the viewer to consider and question their own assumptions and expectations concerning gender, sexuality and power whilst she stands on the dichotomous altar of her identity. Come along and celebrate The One. amira’s work questions the roles of young women in the Muslim/domestic sphere and (expectations placed on them); fat/queer/feminist politics and rituals (in marriage and religion) and transgression of these/contradiction/failure.

via art gallery adelaide - artoom5

(via Soody Sharifi • Artist, Photographer - Houston, TX)

‘Hey! Listen’ from Sharifi’s Teenagers series. View her more recent multimedia works here.

“Allah makes Muslims. Allah makes queers.” Many people live at the intersection of their Muslim and queer identities. That includes Terna Tilley-Gyado and Wazina Zondon, organizers and performers who are using art to combat rampant anti-Muslim and anti-queer bigotry and to grow the visibility, support and love for queer Muslims.

Coming Out Muslim: Radical Acts of Love is a powerful collection of multi-genre performance that showcases voices, stories and experiences of the intersections between queerness and Islam. The performance is the continuation of the Tilley-Gyado and Zondon’s joint effort to make visible public spaces for lives they love. The project began with facilitated community discussions with the goal to address Islamophobia, which fueled a gallery art show the duo developed in June, and then grew into the performance that opened Thursday.

Terna explained that the need for increased visibility was evident. “A lot of people have said, ‘You can be gay and Muslim?’ I know a good number of people who felt that they had to choose [between queerness and Islam], and I hope this performance and process shows the possibility that they don’t have to—that they can be both.”

via Today’s Love: Taking the Stage for Queer Muslims - COLORLINES

From an October 2011 performance