Joe Namy's art engages with the healing energies of music and the dance floor.
Artist Morehshin Allahyari introduces us to a joyous artwork that asks us to consider “the monstrous, the othered, and the more-than-human.”
What does safety look like in a gathering of talismans and protection? Of the Majlis al-Jinn; of the monstrous; of the othered; of and with humans and more-than-humans. What can we learn from this commitment to queering? Is it possible to sense a distancing and be-longing both at once? [Survival] guilt and joy on a diasporic dance floor? How and when would one know which emotions are the more sacred?
— Moreshin Allahyari
Top image: installation view of Allahyari’s The Queer Withdrawings and Qareen I and Qareen II (“constant companions”), from the exhibition Rave into the Future: Art in Motion, October 24, 2025–January 12, 2026. Photograph by Kevin Candland, © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
Bay Area-based Iranian-Kurdish artist Morehshin Allahyari‘s work weaves together complex narratives in opposition to the ongoing influence of Western technological colonialism in the context of the Middle East and North Africa.
