Curator Ridikkuluz reflects on proximity, satire, and the politics of gathering across Arab queer diasporas in a conversation on ‘minna | منا of us’ at PARTICIPANT INC and SALMA in New York.
20 April 2026
Ridikkuluz enters into conversation with Suzette Bell-Roberts about an exhibition shaped by intimacy, urgency, and shared political ground. Bringing together artists across Arab diasporas, the project approaches queerness not as spectacle or slogan, but as atmosphere, a recognition of lived proximity shaped by lineage, grief, resistance, and care. In this exchange, Ridikkuluz reflects on staging an exhibition that resists narratives of progress, foregrounds vision over visibility, and proposes a collective futurity grounded in multiplicity, inheritance, and the quiet recognition of being claimed, simply, as of us.
Installation view. Photos by Studio Kukla
Suzette Bell-Roberts: As a collective curatorial effort led by you , how did you establish a shared conceptual ground for ‘[minna|منا]ᵒᶠ ᵘˢ’ of us while holding political urgency and communal care together?
Ridikkuluz: At a time when truth is considered too political, it mattered that ‘[minna|منا]ᵒᶠ ᵘˢ’ was held by spaces with a history of supporting queer artists on the front lines– long before institutions decided it looked good in a press release. SALMA had put a painting of mine, “How to avoid being thrown off Roofs”*, in a Palestinian-centred exhibit called Numbers, and PARTICIPANT INC was one of the first art organisations to sign on to PACBI. It felt like a gathering of comrades, so when it came to the artists, all we had to do was pass the mic.
Installation view. Photos by Studio Kukla
The term “minna” signals being claimed as “of us”. How did you translate this sense of queer belonging into the exhibition’s spatial and conceptual framework?
“Minna” is less about identity and more about atmosphere. It’s that “oh shit” moment of familiar experience— when someone clocks you’ve survived the same systems, and the space suddenly feels different. In Elias Richmawi’s Azooma, Beit Sahour, Palestine 2019, the artist steps away for a cigarette during a family gathering, capturing a familiar queer feeling of being “neither here nor there.” Mariah Carey sings about the beauty and pain of living on the “Outside”. But Richmawi’s moment suggests something else in the Arab queer experience: we’re not “neither here nor there,” but rather “here and there” – and that multiplicity is the power of our lived experience.
Installation view. Photos by Studio Kukla.
Bringing together artists from multiple Arab diasporas, how did you sustain individual specificity while articulating a shared condition of proximity?
Many of us know what it’s like to be bullied by Regina George. In this case, her name is Israel. Proximity to violence creates a strange intimacy, something that comes up often in Basyma Saad’s ‘Congress of Idling Persons’ (2021). Each artist responds to that proximity differently. Yet, in this exhibit, intimacy also exists in the divine feminine, as seen in Anka Kassabji’s ‘Sandstorm’ (2017). Anka Kassabji is the essence of, and, for that reason, was deliberately spread throughout the show.
Installation view. Photos by Studio Kukla.
Many works engage lineage through craft and transmission. How did you approach tradition as a living, adaptive force within queer diasporic contexts?
Tradition in this show isn’t nostalgia (ayyam al izz). It’s picking up fragments of lineage and reassembling to resist erasure. The Lenox-Samour Twins have lineage to Bethlehem, known for religious tableaus in mother-of-pearl. In their piece, ‘The Sky’s Assault on the Reality of Men’ (2026), they use the motif of the northern star that once guided us to Jesus to guide us through queer star-tatted bodies on Grindr today.
Installation view. Photos by Studio Kukla.
In a climate where queer visibility is frequently instrumentalised, how did you guard against the exhibition being absorbed into narratives of progress or rescue?
The oppressor often claims we make a spectacle out of Queerness, but they are the ones who make it a spectacle by weaponising it to fuel their propaganda. We are above the pinkwashing talking points made on “The View”. In this exhibit, queerness sits in the background, while vision takes centre stage. Alex Khalifa spent three years carving alabaster for Bust (2023-2026), a testament to the seriousness of their practice.
Installation view. Photos by Studio Kukla.
The show holds grief, rage, and tenderness in tension. How did you shape an atmosphere where these effects could coexist?
A class I took back in college, Politics of the Senses with Uchenna Itam, got me thinking about space in relation to the body. I explored this when creating a funerary room memorialising my late brother Andrew. I approached the heaviness of this exhibit the same way: the smell of oud and myrrh bakhour, the sound of Falkyon’s field recordings, the sight of artist constellations, the feeling of NYC’s brick weather creeping through the space, and the taste of Fares Rizk- aka Sultana’s Knafeh (2026).
The show moves through darkness until you’re greeted by Xaytun Nasr’s landscapes through all mediums at the entrance of SALMA. Xaytun pays homage to Sarah Hegazi, an Egyptian writer and activist killed in 2020 after being tortured for waving a rainbow flag at a Mashrou Leila concert in Cairo. Her final words read, “I want the sky, not the land”. Xaytun’s response, ‘I Want the Land, Not the sky’ (2026), holds grief while insisting on life free of the colonial entity in the light before the exhibition continues in the dark.
Installation view. Photos by Studio Kukla.
Did your engagement with satire and performativity inform your approach to display and audience encounter?
I was a theatre kid in high school, so I often think about staging. At the end of The Phantom of the Opera, the mask sits on the edge of a chair as a single spotlight hones in on it, and the theatre goes dark. This idea of– only seeing what needs to be seen– bearing witness to illuminated truths guided the exhibit. We’re not hiding in the dark. Much like the Phantom, we’re protecting the space and choosing who enters.
A shift in the conversation. A recentering. A chapter in the textbook is free from the imperial fantasy of progress. An ongoing conversation. Not a trend or neat image, but a lineage that seeks no permission.
Installation view. Photos by Studio Kukla.
The exhibition is on view at PARTICIPANT INC and SALMA in New York until 22 March 2026.
