Samak Kosem
habibi, a video of a performance, works in dialog with “the dancing boys” or “Bacha Bazi,” an entertainment culture in South Asia (mostly Afghanistan and Pakistan) which are referenced in reports, documentaries, novels and films, and are discussed in relation to the issue of human trafficking, homosexuality, gender inequality, and religious discourses. This video work reflects the contradictions of the male gaze vis-a-vis the imagined male effeminacy and form of desire in religious subjectivities. This performance of “Bacha Bazi” by Manawat Promrat, a queer Muslim both explores and exposes their body as material culture. Meanwhile, brotherhood presents Muslim sarongs collected from the young queer men of Nakon Sri Thammarat, a southern province of Thailand where many Islamic schools are located. Their sarongs are cut and put together to reflect the intimacy of their brotherhood and allude to sexual desires in their homosocial circles. The fragments of sarong are juxtaposed and connected by their edges. The texts in Arabic are translated confessions of Kosem’s being queer. Muslims believe that objects return alive in the next world as witnesses of human sin and merit, and that the only language that God converses with is Arabic.
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