{"id":18632,"date":"2026-02-09T13:58:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T11:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/?p=18632"},"modified":"2026-02-10T16:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T14:42:21","slug":"fann-w-fenjein-queer-falafel-on-bodies-borders-and-the-politics-of-refusal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/fann-w-fenjein-queer-falafel-on-bodies-borders-and-the-politics-of-refusal\/","title":{"rendered":"Fann w Fenjein: Queer Falafel"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Fann w Fenjein: Queer Falafel<\/b><\/p>

On bodies, borders, and the politics of refusal<\/b><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Foreword: Queer Falafel does not perform to entertain comfort. Their work exists to unsettle, confront, and rupture the white gaze, colonial memory, and gender binaries.<\/span><\/em><\/p>

A Lebanese multidisciplinary artist working across performance, sound, text, and visuals, Queer Falafel operates from the body as both archive and weapon. Their practice draws from lived experiences of queerness, migration, and racialization, rejecting institutional palatability and exposing how fetishization and tokenization function even within supposedly progressive cultural spaces.<\/span><\/em><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

In this conversation, Queer Falafel speaks candidly about adapting their work across geographies, refusing to educate audiences who demand explanations, navigating the contradictions of institutional access, and reclaiming bodily agency as an act of survival rather than spectacle. What emerges is not a manifesto, but a refusal to exist on anyone else\u2019s terms.<\/span><\/em><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Stephani Moukhaiber<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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For readers encountering your work for the first time: who is Queer Falafel, and how do you describe what you do across performance, music, text, and visual practice?<\/b>

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Queer Falafel is my artist name, but it\u2019s not really a persona. It\u2019s me. I\u2019m a Lebanese multidisciplinary artist working with performance, visuals, music, and text. I didn\u2019t decide to be political:my work is political because I exist.<\/span><\/p>

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I\u2019m queer. I\u2019m racialized. I\u2019m living in Europe. That alone makes the work political. What I do is decolonial in the sense that I\u2019m constantly deconstructing myself, realizing the hierarchies I\u2019m trapped in, and exposing how they shape the way bodies like mine are consumed.<\/span><\/p>

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The name itself \u2014 <\/span>Queer Falafel<\/span><\/i> \u2014 is deliberate. Queerness is \u201ctrendy\u201d in the art world. Migration is \u201ctrendy\u201d. Even certain forms of suffering are \u201ctrendy\u201d. I leaned into that oxymoron consciously, knowing exactly how Orientalism and queer fetishization work in cultural spaces.<\/span><\/p>

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I\u2019m anti-institutional. Very radical. But I\u2019m also aware of my hypocrisy. I don\u2019t believe in the fantasy of dismantling institutions from within \u2014 I\u2019m an abolitionist who still moves through institutions when necessary. I don\u2019t pretend otherwise. I\u2019m fine holding that contradiction.<\/span><\/p>

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Your work moves between live performance, electro-Arab sets, installations, and political text. How did this multidisciplinary language take shape, and what does it allow you to say that a single medium could not?<\/b><\/p>

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It\u2019s just my way, like I realized this is my mode of expression, because I’m very multifaceted.<\/span><\/p>

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It\u2019s not a strategy,\u00a0 it\u2019s how I exist. I\u2019ve worked with the body, with music, with visuals. I direct everything I do. I produce everything I do. Layering mediums is how I find myself.<\/span><\/p>

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The body is always the starting point. My work is visceral and body-based, but I don\u2019t leave it floating in abstraction. I place the body in a political and visual context. I\u2019m very direct. I don\u2019t hide behind metaphors.<\/span><\/p>

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Text matters to me. Sometimes I subtitle, sometimes I don\u2019t. Sometimes I speak Arabic without translation on purpose. That\u2019s intentional. Not everything needs to be accessible. Not everything needs to be explained.<\/span><\/p>

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There’s a strategy in withholding. There\u2019s care in deciding who something is for.<\/span><\/p>



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Queer Falafel at Adira Drag Festival in Berlin, Taken by CerenSaner<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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You adapt your work depending on where you perform. How do audiences respond differently across geographies?<\/b><\/p>

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It changes a lot. I adapt constantly. I don\u2019t believe in copy-pasting the same performance everywhere.<\/span><\/p>

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When I performed in Beirut, I wasn\u2019t doing what I do in Europe. I was talking about similar things, but to a very different audience. I\u2019m not coming from Europe to give lessons or hatred. That would be violent.<\/span><\/p>

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In Europe, reactions vary. In the Basque Country, people were very politicized. They didn\u2019t take things personally. Their history matters. In France, everything becomes personal. Once, I simply read out the list of countries France colonized \u2014 with music in the background \u2014 and people walked out. They found it provocative. I was just reading facts.<\/span><\/p>

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I\u2019m used to being told, <\/span>\u201cI didn\u2019t know France colonized Lebanon.\u201d<\/span><\/i> Hearing that over and over affects you.<\/span><\/p>

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Different places trigger different emotions in me. Sometimes I feel empowered. Sometimes it hurts. I\u2019ve learned to take care of myself. At the end of the day, I do the work for myself first. People can resonate, be shocked, leave \u2014 all of that is part of it.<\/span><\/p>

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You speak out strongly against white supremacy and colonial histories. How do these power structures still shape everyday life for queer and feminized Arab bodies?<\/b><\/p>

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It depends on class, passports, and mobility. Someone with access to movement lives a completely different reality than someone trying to escape without papers.<\/span><\/p>

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There\u2019s also deep fetishization, especially in hegemonic gay spaces \u2014 spaces that are supposedly progressive but are actually very cis, white, and chauvinistic. They reproduce the same hierarchies while claiming inclusivity.<\/span><\/p>

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I\u2019m aware of my own positionality too. I\u2019m non-binary, but I\u2019m often read as a cis gay man. That comes with privilege. Trans and visibly non-conforming bodies experience violence differently \u2014 more intensely.<\/span><\/p>

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Even spaces that promote \u201cintersectionality\u201d are deeply elitist. They\u2019re separatist. They perform inclusion without actually redistributing power. The people booking, curating, and deciding,\u00a0 they\u2019re still mostly white.<\/span><\/p>

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I get booked for \u201cqueer migrant festivals\u201d as if my work only exists within a theme of suffering. As if it\u2019s not valid on its own.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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You describe your position as \u201cGenderfuck.\u201d What does that mean beyond aesthetics?<\/b><\/p>

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Before anything political, it\u2019s identitarian. Gender binarism was imposed through colonialism and white supremacy. Before that, many societies recognized multiple genders \u2014 some even revered people who existed between categories.<\/span><\/p>

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Genderfuck is a refusal of the lie that this binary is natural. It\u2019s not. It was engineered to serve capitalism: inheritance, nuclear families, control over reproduction.<\/span><\/p>

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I was educated as male. That doesn\u2019t disappear because I reject gender norms. Genderfuck isn\u2019t pretending power disappears. It\u2019s constantly working against how it lives inside you.<\/span><\/p>

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Intersex people are still mutilated today because of binary thinking. That\u2019s not abstract. That\u2019s violence.<\/span><\/p>

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You deal with complex political issues, yet your work remains visceral and immediate. What role do emotion, movement, and sound play in helping audiences connect to those ideas?<\/b><\/p>

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I don\u2019t consider myself an activist. I\u2019m politicized, but I\u2019m expressing discoveries that affect me personally.<\/span><\/p>

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I don\u2019t perform to convince. I externalize what I\u2019m processing. People feel it whether they want to or not. Many leave my shows. Others write to me afterward \u2014 mostly non-white people, but white people too. I\u2019m raw. I have a lot of emotions. I don\u2019t sanitize them.<\/span><\/p>

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People expect nudity, shock, spectacle \u2014 and sometimes that happens \u2014 but that\u2019s the least important part of my work. The real discomfort comes from what I say.<\/span><\/p>

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How do you deal with backlash, especially from white audiences?<\/b><\/p>

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It used to affect me a lot. Now, less.<\/span><\/p>

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I\u2019m not responsible for educating anyone. I\u2019m not here to explain racism to people who benefit from it. When someone tells me I\u2019m being \u201creverse racist,\u201d I don\u2019t engage anymore. I\u2019ve done that labor already.<\/span><\/p>

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My work helped me reclaim bodily agency, the right to not explain, not soften, not justify.<\/span><\/p>

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And this is really the most like body agency that I felt, that my work has helped me reclaim and also get a lot of beautiful debates, some of them hard, and some of them where they make me see things that obviously, you know, but it’s this is amazing, you know?<\/span><\/p>

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That refusal is powerful.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Queer Falafel at MYTO in London, taken by Dimitri Djuric<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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A recurring thread in your practice is the refusal of fetishization \u2014 particularly of feminized, racialized, and queer Arab identities. What strategies do you use to dismantle this gaze without reproducing it for consumption?<\/b>

<\/b><\/p>

I realized that it’s a process. I was falling definitely into this fetishization for the white gaze, even if I would come and cut it and do my discourse, which was kind of a transition for me, but I was still falling into it. That\u2019s part of the process. You don\u2019t escape the gaze overnight.<\/span><\/p>

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Eventually, I stopped performing things I wouldn\u2019t wear or embody in my daily life. I realized certain choices were for white consumption, so I dropped them.<\/span><\/p>

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Moving to Berlin and performing more for people from my region changed everything. I started performing fully in Arabic, without subtitles. When Arabs are in the room, you can\u2019t perform caricature. You can\u2019t fake it.<\/span><\/p>

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Some of my earlier work was still made <\/span>for<\/span><\/i> white people, even when it was confrontational. I\u2019m done with that now. My audience might still be mostly white because of geography \u2014 but I don\u2019t cater to them anymore.<\/span><\/p>

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If they don\u2019t get it, that\u2019s fine.This work is for us.<\/span><\/p>

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Is there anything you feel hasn\u2019t been covered, something you want to leave readers with?<\/b><\/p>

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The rave is not the real revolution, we\u2019re not in the 90\u2019s anymore.<\/span><\/p>


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<\/span>Neoliberalism kills.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

You will never be \u201cnot racist.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>You work on being radically anti-racist \u2014 constantly.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

And drink water. Hydrate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>



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Fann w Fenjein: Queer Falafel On bodies, borders, and the politics of refusal Foreword: Queer Falafel does not perform to entertain comfort. Their work exists to unsettle, confront, and rupture the white gaze, colonial memory, and gender binaries. A Lebanese multidisciplinary artist working across performance, sound, text, and visuals, Queer Falafel operates from the body […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[322],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fann-w-fenjein"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/al-rawiya.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Copy-of-_MG_5740.jpg?fit=5472%2C3648&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18632"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18654,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18632\/revisions\/18654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-rawiya.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}