I will always be looking for you!

I Will Always Be Looking For You – A Queer Anthology on Arab Art is a radical 384 page bilingual collection that documents, disrupts, and reimagines queer presence in the Arab world. Curated through years of cross-border collaboration with over 100 contributors, researchers, community outreach, and artistic care, this is the first anthology of its kind, building space for queer Arab art not as a category, but as a method, resistance, and shared memory.

Hosted by Critical Media Lab contributors Johannes Bruder & Lucie Kolb, the anthology’s Co-editors and Project Lead will host a collaborative lab exploring the networked structures and alternative functions that made this project possible, including especially the work of Haven for Artists, a cultural feminist organization based in Beirut, Lebanon. Working at the intersection of art and activism, Haven is a physical and digital platform supporting cultural works and knowledge production rooted in intersectional feminism, gender and racial justice, and decolonial practices. The session will examine how trust-building, community organizing, queer Arab artistic practices, and publishing as a method intersect, revealing the labor and infrastructures, often invisible, that enable the creation of the landmark volume I Will Always Be Looking For You.

Yasmine Rifaii, Co-Editor / Creative Director (Beirut)
Yasmine Rifaii is an artist from El Mina, Lebanon. Her practice traverses editorial, curatorial, architectural, and visual art disciplines. She is the Creative Director of Haven for Artists, a Beirut-based cultural feminist organization. She is also the co-founder of Al Hayya, a print magazine and online platform dedicated to the Arab woman where she served as Editorial Director on 4 print issues.

Nadim Choufi, Co-Editor / Lead Researcher (Beirut/Rotterdam)
Nadim Choufi is a Lebanese artist and editor. Nadim’s work explores ideals of progress, how they manifest, seduce, and shape our lives. Through sculpture, film, and text, Choufi draws on nonconforming desires in visual and literary practices that resist dominant narratives of national and global progress.

Dayna Ash, Project Lead (Beirut)
Dayna Ash (she/they) is an intersectional feminist, performing artist, writer, and the founder & Executive Director of Haven for Artists, a cultural feminist organization working at the intersection of art and activism. Dayna is an autodidact academic whose work in advocacy and arts is rooted in intersectional and de-colonial queer practices for the creation of alternative structures.