Scholars such as Walter Mignolo, Irene Silverblatt, and Sonia Saldivar-Hull are now unpacking the influences of Western modernity and its legacy, and some of them are focusing on issues of language and translation. For example, the Arabic word jins<\/em> came to hold the meaning of both biological sex and national origin sometime in the early twentieth century. The word, derived from the Greek genus<\/em>, had existed in Arabic since ancient times, holding the biological meanings of type<\/em> and kind<\/em>, as well as that of ethnolinguistic origin<\/em>. As late as 1870, its connotations of sex and nationalism had not yet come into usage.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Joseph Massad, \u201cRe-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World,\u201d Public Culture<\/em>, vol. 14, no. 2 (2002): 371.<\/span> Similarly, in the 1950s, translators of Freud \u00adcoined the non-specific term for sexuality, jinsiyyah<\/em>, which also means nationality<\/em> and citizenship<\/em>. Here, post-contact and under the purview of colonialism, we see how the Arabic language changed to include sexuality discourses as a part of<\/em> identity discourses, many times indistinguishable from one another. This marks a significant shift: local identity scripts were colonized by Western modernity narratives, erasing previously existing fluid gender norms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is relevant when we look at surviving Middle Eastern and later Islamic literature from the fourth to the thirteenth centuries that narrates examples of homosocial relations and gay desire, none of which illustrates \u201cgay\u201d as existing as a stable identity. For instance, mention of homoerotic relationships among the Mamluk elite in late-medieval Egypt and Syria shows that the public expression of homoeroticism (especially in poetry) was fully permitted by Islamic societies before and during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - E. K. Rowson, \u201cHomoerotic Liaisons among the Mamluk Elite in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria,\u201d in Islamicate Sexualities: Translations Across Temporal Geographies of Desire,<\/em> ed. Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi (Cambridge: Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, 2008), 204\u200a\u2014\u200a38.<\/span> Likewise, pre-modern Arab-Islamic texts speak frequently of the androgynous beauty of beardless boys, and poetry and other texts are explicit about anal intercourse and fellatio.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Valerie Traub, \u201cThe Past is a Foreign Country? The Times and Spaces of Islamicate Sexuality Studies,\u201d in Islamicate Sexualities: Translations Across Temporal Geographies of Desire,<\/em> ed. Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi (Cambridge: Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University, 2008), 24.<\/span> This historical record of desire is instrumental in locating contemporary notions of sexual discourse in the Middle East. The children of these generations, as well as those within the diaspora, inherited a homosocial history that is still steeped within their own cultural traditions, but now with the contradictory disavowal of homosexual subjectivity. They are left with opposing views of Western and non-Western sexual practices, tense historical framing of Arab sexual discourses, and comparison with Western narratives of progress and enlightened sexual identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of these tensions lie under the surface in the work of Iranian-Canadian artist Ebrin Bagheri. Working primarily in drawing and painting, Bagheri has been exploring issues pertinent to Iranian culture and identity. Using portraiture to explore themes of masculinity and gender, he alludes to historical notions of pre-modern desire and gender norms alternative to the current Western models. His large-scale drawings are reminiscent of historical Persian miniature paintings in their detail and intricacy. Using Persian cultural tropes\u200a\u2014\u200apoetic, literary, and visual\u200a\u2014\u200ahe complicates notions of Persian culture, contemporary Iranian identity, and the conflicting themes of gender and sexuality that might arise at their intersection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his Eastern Desires<\/em> series (2014\u201317), Bagheri uses delicate drawing techniques coupled with immense detail to depict scenes of Iranian men. These scenes fluctuate between contemporary subjects and archival source material that references Iran prior to the industrial revolution and modern period. These intimate scenes, at times evocative of hammam<\/em> or bathhouse settings, are coupled with visual motifs reminiscent of Qajar dynasty Persian paintings that point to a masculinity of the subject unlike traditional depictions of Iranian men. In very recent works, such as Someone Who is Like No-One<\/em> (2017) he uses similar archival references and delicate drawing techniques, coupled with jarring visual tropes that look out of place. This theme of not-belonging is extended in his use of traditional notions of hiding and various critiques of the binaries of private\u2013public culture and visibility\u2013invisibility. In this way, he unsettles traditional depictions of Iranian men, examines the shifts in gender norms from pre-modern Iran, and puts these shifts in dialogue with contemporary identities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n In Bagheri\u2019s 2015 untitled drawingfrom the Eastern Desires<\/em> series, <\/em>his focus on young adolescent boys, soft drawing techniques, and reframing of masculinity all lend themselves to a reading of homosocial desire as outlined by scholars of Islamicate sexuality such as Kathryn Babayan, Afsenah Najmabadi, Khaled El-Rouayeb, Dror Ze\u2019vi, and Joseph Boone. In this drawing, a young man no older than twenty stares longingly at the viewer. His head is cov\u00adered in a turban that is slightly askew so that the viewer can see his long, luscious locks of hair falling to the side of his head; his face is accentuated by long eyelashes and faint facial hair. Although Bagheri\u2019s subjects are sometimes nude or in various states of undress to invoke a hammam<\/em> or bathhouse scene, this figure is clothed in a tunic embellished with red cherries, echoed by the cherries adorning one of his earlobes like an earring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first glance, one might recognize the fig\u00adure\u2019s Islamicate attributes, but not necessarily the homosociality behind the drawing. In a deeper reading of the symbolic and stylistic elements, it becomes clear that this drawing is as much a history of sexuality as any archive studied by scholars in the field. First, many authors have noted the relationship between facial hair and age in homoerotic literature and cultural traditions; Afsenah Najmabadi, for instance, points out that \u201cthe growth of a full grown beard marked adult manhood, [and] the adolescent male\u2019s transition from an object of desire to a desiring subject.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity<\/em> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 15.<\/span> Rather than having a full beard, the subject of the drawing has a khatt\u200a\u2014\u200a<\/em>a hint of a moustache\u200a\u2014\u200aand the light facial hair that grows before the beard of adulthood.6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Ibid.<\/span> This marks the time when an adolescent is considered most beautiful, but that hint of a moustache also heralds the beginning of the end of his status as object of desire for adult men and his own movement into manhood. Here, Bagheri captures the moment when the boy is still an amrad, <\/em>an adolescent male who, according to the beauty standards of pre-modern Persian culture, was an object of utmost desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cherries juxtapose the boy\u2019s masculinity against their fragility and softness. Although the cherries repeated all over his tunic might speak to this delicateness and foster understanding of an alternative masculinity, his cherry \u201cearring\u201d references another homosocial instance of Islamicate history. Bagheri\u2019s depiction of the adolescent adorned with a rich-red cherry earring refers to the history of dancing boys, or k\u00f6\u00e7ek<\/em>, during the Ottoman Empire. Often analyzed in the literature for their gender-bending sexual fluidity, the k\u00f6\u00e7ek<\/em> were an established institution throughout the Middle East and North Africa; they performed in caf\u00e9s, at court, in wedding processions, and even during religious festivals. They were bejewelled and elaborately dressed, and numerous orientalist photographs document the European fascination with them.7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Joseph A. Boone, The Homoerotics of Orientalism<\/em> (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 106; see also the photographs in Ali Behdad and Luke Gartlan (eds.), Photography\u2019s Orientalism: New Essays on Colonial Representation<\/em> (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2013).<\/span> There was a parallel between them and the handsome beardless youths hired at coffeehouses to serve patrons. As historian Khaled El-Roukhayeb notes, the famous Damascene poet Ahmad al-\u2019Inayati was said to be in the habit of going every morning to the coffee\u00adhouses \u201cwith running water and handsome cup-bearer\u2026 and drink[ing] numerous cups of coffee.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Khaled El-Rouayheb, Before Homo\u00adsexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500\u200a\u2014\u200a1800<\/em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 43.<\/span> Bagheri\u2019s drawing is reminiscent and reflective of pre-modern gender ideals of the beardless amrad, <\/em>the playfulness of the k\u00f6\u00e7ek<\/em>, and the desire for the beautiful server boys who worked in coffeehouses and bath\u00adhouses. Bagheri\u2019s drawing cites a specific moment in multiple geographic spheres, a moment prior to the banning of the k\u00f6\u00e7ek<\/em> from public performances in mid-nineteenth century, prior to European travellers shaming the unabashed homoerotic culture of coffeehouses and public baths, which were too lurid for their tastes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bagheri\u2019s youth marks a moment of uncolonized sexual scripts that reflect Islamicate notions of beauty and desire, left to be interpreted and read in modern society with the language of modern sexual scripts, and under the purview of contemporary art. In portraying this interesting flux and flow of historicized sexual bodies, Bagheri brings the sexual discourses of the above-mentioned scholars out of the archives and into the lived reality of Islamicate sexual subjects today. The shadow of homosociality and the erasure of alternative sexual scripts and same-sex desire are seen in the boy\u2019s longing gaze, in that fleeting moment between being an object of desire and becom\u00ading an object of abjection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, analyzing contemporary art of the queer diaspora illustrates how pre-modern Islamicate sexual scripts are not fully colonized and live on in multigenerational subjects of the diaspora. The double bind that the queer diasporic subject often faces can be linked to these hangovers and tensions, and the study of visual art and culture better depicts the specific ways in which these sexual scripts are both manifested and negotiated by non-Western subjects in the West.<\/p>\n![\"Bagheri_The](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/91_DO02_Gayed_Bagheri_The-Birds-and-Queer-scaled.jpg\")
The Birds and Queer<\/em>, from the series Eastern Desires<\/em>, 2013.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Ebrin](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/91_DO02_Gayed_Ebrin-Bagheri_Untitled-scaled.jpg\")
Untitled<\/em>, from the series Someone Who Is Like No-One<\/em>, 2015-2017.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Bagheri_Untitled_Eastern](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/I91_DO02_Gayed_Bagheri_Untitled_Eastern-Desires.jpg\")
Untitled<\/em>, from the series Eastern Desires<\/em>, 2015.
Photo: courtesy of the artist
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Bagheri_The](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/91_DO02_Gayed_Bagheri_The-Queer.jpg\")
The Queer<\/em>, from the series Someone Who Is Like No-One<\/em>, 2015.
Photos: courtesy of the artist
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Bagheri_Me,](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/91_DO02_Gayed_Bagheri_Me-Seahorses-and-I-scaled.jpg\")
Me, Seahorses and I<\/em>, from the series Someone Who Is Like No-One<\/em>, 2017.
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n