Privacy is elusive these days. The watchful eyes of fascists, platform capitalists, and peers are always on us, whether you like it or not. It is exhausting to always be “on.”
Is it possible to find space within the entanglements of surveillance capitalism to be yourself rather than perform yourself? A space where we can commune, grieve, and dance together with ourselves?
The Asian Art Museum’s exhibition Rave into the Future, on view until January 26, 2026, seeks to generate a counterpublic that centers the dancefloor as a site where beats and bodies swirl together into a glittery cacophony of togetherness. Femme and queer artists of the Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) diaspora gathered at the institution to present performances, sculptures, and media installations that celebrate raving as a community-building and future-forging practice.
Before entering the exhibition, I was confronted by Sahar Khoury’s radio tower—a sonic threshold made of ceramic sculptures of pita breads and lyrics from Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum’s songs, oversized prayer beads, and radios arranged in metal cages playing a musical commission by Lara Sarkissian and Esra Canoğullari, as well as an audio recording of the artist’s late aunt singing. The monumental tower calls visitors to join the rave in the institution’s inner sanctum, not unlike the minaret of the mosque broadcasting the adhan, or the Islamic call to prayer. I meditated on the way diasporic communities often develop kinship and mourn loss through food, music, and faith.
Then I entered a spotlit transitional space where I encountered a handful of Roomba vacuums preparing the floor for our ritualistic dancing. Presented by Turkish artist duo :mentalKLINIK (Yasemin Baydar and Birol Demir), eight robot vacuums zig and zag across a long, white floor covered in fuchsia glitter, marking both the beginning and end of the rave and the beginning and end of the exhibition. I felt excited, and maybe apprehensive, about the immediate encounter of bodies and sonic reverberations that waited for me in the next room. Large iridescent vinyl letters on the wall across from the installation signaled that what I was about to experience is “TERRIBLY JOLLY,” as if alluding to the rave’s capacity to please and haunt.
The main gallery was a discordant open space divided further into several stages of the emotional and temporal arc of the rave as techno music and audio from adjacent media installations played simultaneously. At the heart of the exhibition is Joe Namy’s Disguise as Dancefloor (2022–ongoing). Made of square copper tiles, the artist presents a 100-square-foot dance floor accompanied by potted palm plants, birds of paradise, and a black puffer jacket hanging on a single clothes stand. Copper, a conductor of electricity and healing, acts here as a conduit for our collective movement and sound. Accompanying Namy’s dancefloor is a functioning DJ turntable deck by Khoury, constructed from similar materials and found objects as her radio tower.
Time, ritual, and the supernatural play crucial roles in the SWANA diaspora and rave culture. Farah Al Qasimi’s comedy-horror video Um Al Naar (Mother of Fire) (2019) centers around a jinn who reasserts her relevance in the diasporic community by casting spells on humans to endlessly dance. Morehshin Allahyari’s She Who Sees the Unknown: The Queer Withdrawings series (2022) presents mythical figures of dance found in Islamic mythology, manuscripts, and Iranian shrines as 3D-printed sculptures and wall vinyl installation. I found myself reflecting on the presence of these supernatural figures presented here as spiritual guides and ancestors whom we conjure and appease through rhythmic movement, much like religious ascetics whose bodies act as vehicles for divine intervention.
The works of Maryam Yousif and Yasmine Nasser Diaz remind us that the rave is ultimately a space for collective activation. Yousif’s oversized ceramic cassette tape honors Assyrian singer and actress Juliana Jendo, whose recordings sung in Turoyo and Chaldean Neo-Aramic transform these ancient languages into living monuments of resilience and heritage.1 Diaz’s pink bedroom installation represents the bedroom as another dancefloor surrounded by protest ephemera and a two-channel video of feminist protests and women dancing in domestic interiors. Dance becomes a joyful challenge to the politics of public space and an affirmation of feminine alterity.
The exhibition feels isolated from the rest of the museum’s collections of primarily East Asian artifacts, yet it also generates a set of relations between unexpected communities through the medium of queer and trans ecstasy. Namely, I am reminded of the 2013 Gezi Park protest in Istanbul, where queer and trans activists were the main catalysts against the state’s gentrification efforts. The park’s modest size engendered different communities to interact with each other in unexpected ways. For example, an article from the feminist queer publication autostraddle reported that the LGBT tent was set up next to a conservative Islamic anti-capitalist group.2 Unexpected alliances were forged within the counterpublic space of the protest encampment while the police surrounded the perimeter of the park. Perhaps this is also the show’s objective: to deliver a site where vulnerability can lead to a possible future of community under the institution’s austerity.
1. Naz Cuguoğlu, “Rave into the Future” (exh. essay, 2025), https://asianart.org/stories/rave-into-the-future-by-naz-cuguoglu/
2. Vivian, “Queer Activism and the Taksim Gezi Riots: What You Didn’t Know”, autostraddle, 1 July 2013, https://www.autostraddle.com/queer-activism-and-the-taksim-gezi-riots-what-you-didnt-know-182975/
Rave into the Future
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA
Oct 24, 2025 – Jan 26, 2026