Khookha McQueer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Khookha McQueer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | March 17, 1987 |
| Occupations | Activist, artist |
Khookha McQueer (Arabic: خوخة مكوير; born 17 March 1987)[1] is a Tunisian, LGBT+ and feminist activist and artist.
They are one of the first trans women known to the general public in Tunisia.[2][3]
Khookha comes from a conservative Tunisian family. After going through a severe depression, they left university and started their LGBT+ activism. They came out twice: once in regards to their sexual orientation, as a gay man, before having their transition, and the second in 2015 in regards to their identity as a trans non-binary woman;[4] thus starting to use the English pronouns They and Them and the feminine pronouns for French and Arabic,[2] as well as their chosen name, Khookha McQueer. Although they identify as non binary and not as a woman, they still prefer using the feminine pronouns in French and Arabic to express that part of their identity that was oppressed during a large part of their life.
Artistic work
They started their professional career as a graphic designer.[5] All of their work is shared on their official Instagram account.[6] Their works deal with the question of identity and non-binarity.[6] The artist also aims to show the challenges the Tunisian LGBT community face in a normative heterosexual and homophobic society.[6] They accept that we qualify the work they produce as ''drag'', but they consider themselves and their art work as a living experience whose parameter that changes with each product is the gender and its esthetic expression.[6] They get a lot of their artistic inspiration from the Tunisian heritage, but their main muses remain the 1980s and 1990s divas from the Middle-East and Latin America such as Sherihan, Thalía and Nawal Al Zoghbi.[6]
