Performing critique

Chaza Charafeddine’s Divine Comedy as an inter-temporal dialogue on gender and sexual diversity

Abstract

This article discusses the photographic project Divine Comedy by the Lebanese artist Chaza Charafeddine. The work juxtaposes contemporary portraits of Beirut’s underground transgender and cross-dressing community with reproductions of Islamic miniatures and popular twentieth-century imagery, thereby creating a space within which to negotiate gender fluidity and sexual ambiguity.