Visualizing Counter-Histories: Queer Muslim Racialized Immigrant Bodies and Gay Bathhouse Raids in Canada w/ Abdullah Qureshi
// October 19th 2026
// 4:30 PM
// GEM Lab, FB 630.15
// 1250 Guy
My postdoctoral project examines the absence, erasure, and fetishization of queer Muslim, racialized, and immigrant bodies in the visual and archival histories of gay liberation and queer resistance in Canada. I focus on 1970 to 2000, a period during which Canadian gay and queer communities were subjected to aggressive policing and surveillance. Targeted military-style operations, such as the 1977 raids on gay bars Truxx and Le Mystique in Montreal and the 1981 Toronto Bathhouse Raids, resulted in hundreds of patrons being humiliated, beaten, and arrested. In response, thousands of people–gays, lesbians, queers, and their straight allies, from across class divides–mobilized and gathered in protest, demanding accountability, marking a crucial turning point for the gay liberation movement and legal reform in the country. Set within this historical context, my project traces queer Muslim, racialized, and immigrant stories, emphasizing their significance to Canada's gay liberation movement and broader struggles. Using an intersectional framework for research-creation, my project builds on transnational theoretical discourses on feminism, queerness, and race. It employs speculative methodologies grounded in historical research to develop an experimental short art film/exhibit that offers a counter-narrative, positioning structurally marginalized and excluded voices as present, complex, and central to Canadian gay and queer resistance. In my presentation, I offer an overview of my project and discuss my research-creation process, highlighting critical visual strategies for addressing archival silences and erasures.
Abdullah Qureshi is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and educator. Rooted in traditions of abstraction, he incorporates gestural, poetic, and hybrid methodologies to address autobiography, trauma, and sexuality through painting, filmmaking, and immersive events. His doctoral project, Mythological Migrations: Imagining Queer Muslim Utopias–Artistic and Curatorial Strategies of Collaboration, Collective Resistance, and Coalition Building (Aalto University, Finland, 2025), examined the formation of queer identity and resistance in Muslim migratory contexts. Qureshi's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the National Gallery of Art, Islamabad, Alhamra Art Gallery, Lahore, Rossi & Rossi, London, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, and SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco. He has held numerous positions at cultural and educational institutions, including the British Council Pakistan and National College of Arts, Lahore. Qureshi has conducted lectures, paper readings, and artist talks around the world, including at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), Prague, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, PRAKSIS, Oslo, Residency Unlimited, New York, University of California, Irvine, Valand Academy, Gothenburg, and Fábrica de Arte Cubano, Havana. In 2017, Qureshi received the Art and International Cooperation fellowship at Zurich University of the Arts, and in 2018, a research fellowship at the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research, Boston. From 2022 to 2024, he was a Lecturer in Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Visiting Faculty at Central Saint Martins, London. He is currently a SSHRC-Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke / Montreal.
Comments