For Your Eyes Only

by Yasmine Nasser Diaz

It is an honor to have been personally invited by Yasmine Nasser Diaz to be featured among other rebellious dancers in her installation ‘for your eyes only’ at University of Michigan ! It is empowering to see how my practice and the Instagram story highlight collection of ‘bedroom dances’ are not only a collective movement shared by women and non-binary people of SWANA across the globe, but are also active resistance to many regulations and attitudes disregarding wom*n’s freedoms

For Your Eyes Only is the latest iteration of multidisciplinary artist Yasmine Nasser Diaz’s bedroom installation. At first glance, the constructed space is a shimmering homage to the bedroom disco—a sanctuary for uninhibited dance and self-expression. It has also become the setting from which many personal videos are made and shared widely on social media, where platforms such as Instagram and TikTok have blurred the boundary between public and private. Projected into the space is a montage of casual videos shared by female-identifying and non-binary persons of SWANA* origin dancing solo in their rooms. To some, the videos may seem innocent and innocuous, but they can also be seen as acts of defiance that assert the autonomy of bodies that have been surveilled, scrutinized, and censored throughout history.Alongside these intimate moments is a separate reel showing political figures and protest movements from the SWANA region. The images demonstrate the fluctuating attitudes and regulations impacting human rights and freedoms based on gender, and exemplify how—whether we are physically at a protest or sharing our physicality in virtual spaces—our bodies are engaged in some level of risk.
*Southwest Asian/North African

Yasmine Nasser Diaz’s For Your Eyes Only (FYEO) is an installation imbued with the experiences of many, yet wholly encapsulating the personal. A new iteration of her bedroom installation series at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities Gallery, FYEO is a publicly visible interior of a bedroom drenched in pink geometric patterned wallpaper. What will surely first attract the viewer’s eye is the large-scale projection of women and non-binary persons dancing in a reel of selfie videos. A second video which plays on a ‘90s-era television set, is a documentary-style montage of news clips featuring women-led political rallies from around the Global South woven alongside speeches by political figures from the 1950s up to the present. The two-channel video installation plays at the backdrop of a minimalist house track composed by the Beirut-based Carol Abi Ghanem, aka DJ El Shaar. A rose-colored disco ball shines upon the contents of the space: a bed, a vanity mirror set and a glaring pink neon light in the shape of an “evil eye.” On the floor lie objects one would expect to see at a protest protruding from a backpack: protective eye goggles, a megaphone, a small first aid kit, a water bottle, sanitizer and an ACLU pocket ‘know your rights’ booklet. The installation is both inherently private because of its contents, yet unavoidably voyeuristic due to its visibility from the exterior of the university campus. Nevertheless, the space Nasser Diaz has so assiduously assembled feels personal and safe while simultaneously giving off the illusion of being in an electrifying rave. 

Third culture identity and the tensions around growing up in the U.S. as a female-identifying immigrant youth has been a subject Nasser Diaz has returned to in her practice. Previously the focus was on the climate of the ‘90s which also corresponded to the artist’s own experiences. While the TV set in this installation is still a clear nod to that era and legacy, the incorporation of Instagram stories and TikTok clips, as well as the placement of supplies and protective gear for protesting is a direct response to the technologies and social movements of this contemporary moment. Nasser Diaz created the dancing montage from actual clips that SouthWest Asian/North African (SWANA) individuals, primarily from the diaspora, posted of themselves to social media. Those dancing in the selfie videos emit an air of confidence, sensuality, and an overall playfulness. What may not be apparent to some viewers however, is that while social media can be an open space where young women and gender queer persons from SWANA communities can express themselves, it can conversely be a dangerous space used to shame and threaten them. 

The blackmailing and psychological abuse of women through the threat of publicizing recordings showing their bodies in ways that could be deemed immodest has made global headlines that have also informed Nasser Diaz’s work. One such instance was the case of Ghadeer Ahmed, who at the age of 18 sent a video of herself dancing to her boyfriend. After the relationship subsided, the ex posted the video online in an act of revenge and to shame her. Despite Ahmed’s success in having him convicted for defamation, years later, after participating in the Egyptian revolution and pursuing women’s rights activism, the video continued to be used as a means to intimidate and threaten her by other men who sought to discredit her. In an act of defiance and to proclaim her body as a source of pride, she ultimately released the video herself. While the FYEO universe is a space free of humiliation and guarded from the outside world (note even the presence of the transcultural protective symbol of the “evil eye” neon), by featuring videos of evocative dancing and protest movements as well as directly alluding to political activism in the U.S., the potential threats reflected by Ghadeer Ahmed’s experiences loom in the horizon. 

The inclusion of women’s voices coming directly from the Global South through the clips of women-led protest movements is another central layer of FYEO. Among the many clips, there is ample footage featuring women from the Arab world participating in protests during the Arab Spring, now at its 10-year anniversary. While it is clear that women from across the region are at the forefront of their ongoing struggles to end discrimination, diasporic communities navigate an additional set of realities. Due to the ongoing vilification of Islam, suspicions towards SWANA cultures, and the hyper-negative portrayals of Muslim men in Western societies, it is often difficult for women and queer persons in the diaspora to speak up publicly against gender-based injustices and toxic behaviors within their communities. The pressure to maintain a unified front with regards to the onslaught of multilateral violence directed at immigrant Muslim or SWANA communities has, at times, had the effect of isolating and censuring critical perspectives from within. Moreover, such women’s voices have regularly been sought out by proponents of pro-Western geopolitical agendas, throughout history and until the present day, as a way to justify supposed Western superiority as well as colonial or neo-imperial occupations of the region. Yet by juxtaposing this diasporic dilemma alongside the ongoing struggles for rights by women across the region and beyond, the FYEO installation generates complex yet hopeful connections rooted in possibilities for the future. 

Freedom and rights movements do not exist in a vacuum and are often informed by one another. Nasser Diaz’s installation presents a layered constellation of interrelated realities across borders, identities and eras that have the potential to align along intersectional and transnational movements of solidarity. In fact, she herself directly participates in this movement by commissioning other artists to participate in and be part of her work. Nasser Diaz reached out to DJ/producer Carol Abi Ghanem, who fittingly also takes part at the forefront of activism in Lebanon, to create music for the FYEO installation. Ava Ansari is yet another invited artist who will use FYEO’s space in a series of live performances entitled The Gray Area where she will release the public’s pain and revisit somatic, sonic, and scenic celebratory memories from her past living in Iran. Such acts of intersectional artistic social practice are at the core of healing traumas and strengthening the bonds between female and non-binary diasporic communities.  – Lila Nazemian

Dancers

 @alia_jess@amaaniyahya @Angieassal@arshiaxfatima @ayametwalli @bitabell @dancingforthegods@dobbanaxdobbana @dvniedagh@elianechahoud @g_zzz_xx@hamzehdaoud @iriszafraa@jeseniadance @laylomer@lefagdusiecle @low_key_ki@meatspace2000@moroccan.mirage@nadiainherownworld Nawal J,@nuu7ma@phonodelica @queen_habesha@queer.of.sheba @rabboud21@RandaJarrar @sal.alal.ma@samira.kha_dance@sarana_mehra @she_govinda @twist_fire@wallflowerrr16 @wardadance@yassayassayassa@youcandoithabibi

Teaser video by Juliet Flamingo
Original music by Carol Abi Ghanem (DJ El Shaar)
Live performance by Ava Ansari , founder of Poetic Societies 
photo credits Yasmine Diaz, Juliet Hinely , Austin Thomason, Caitlin Abadir-Mullally