republic of body
New York, NY | 07/2016 - 11/2016a choreographed performance of bodies through Amman, Jordan. Part ritual procession and part gay pride parade, the curated event instantiated a public and symbolic space for feminist and queer Arab artists to assume a visibility they are otherwise denied.
By way of a public provocation, Republic of Body stakes its claim to the streets of Amman. This Republic, a nation constructed of and by precarious sexual bodies, unveiled its spatial autonomy in the schema of Hashemite nation-building narratives and through symbols of power borrowed from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as a memetic sovereignty—symbols which in turn were borrowed from the colonial residue of the British Mandate. New performances, costumed by the multi-symbolic objects of this layered history, are enacted by Republic to disrupt a gendered national inheritance. By appropriating these memetic symbols, the members of Republic can express the intersection and mutual construction of queer, Arab, and gender identities, and assert their right to space and legitimacy under the persistently masculine hegemony over the public sphere.
Part ritual procession and part gay pride parade, the march was modeled after Hashemite royal processions. The manifestation of Republic of Body on Al-Shari’a Street is ritualized as an extension of royal ceremonies and confers that power of official appearance to bodies otherwise marginalized in gendered public space.
After a complex permitting process (another parade through municipal power) police came to lead our motorcade of bodily armatures carrying local feminist and queer artists. Guarded by the very state that delegitimizes them, the performers assumed visible orientation on the street: a queer body is veiled and externalized by his accusatory soundbite; a materialization of the elusive modern Arab woman, who otherwise exists only on virtual stages; the Jordanian scarf takes on the femininity that it denies.
+learn more about this project
research | design | curatorial | public intervention
photography:hiba judeh
videography: azza hourani
Artists: fadi zumot, mohammed tayyeb, shireen al-talhouni, dima hourani
team: mohammed hijazi (Ōbsølete), mufeeda abu-zaid, tempo dance company, malin hafensicht, joke jh, sami nada, emran ali, oldoz moradiafkan, jule tri, juliette dlv
[preview of the 45-minute performance that took place on 11/11/2016]
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[al-shari’a street, amman - site of the final performance]
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[sample of the historical and critical text produced as part of the year-long research project]
[al-shari’a street, amman - site of the final performance]
[sample of the historical and critical text produced as part of the year-long research project]