Queer Revelations
The exhibition "Deviant Ornaments" invites you to a unique reading and conversation with author Omar Kasmani.
Can a religiously inspired dream act as a queer vision in life? Bridging personal history with years of research among mystics in Pakistan, this lecture offers an intimate account of a dream and its public afterlife. In a story spanning twenty years and three countries, desire comes out through encounters with the sacred and queerness arrives like a sense of pilgrimage. Queer and religion are made companions. The lecture invites us to appreciate dreams as queer revelations: partial word and deviant forces through which our ties to the world are made, unmade and remade.
A 30-minute reading will be followed by a moderated conversation with curator of education and public programmes for the National Museum Håkon Lillegraven. Exhibition curator Noor Bhangu will introduce the event and the exhibition "Deviant Ornaments", which is on view November 27th 2025 - March 15th, 2026.
Omar Kasmani is a cultural anthropologist and writer based in Berlin. He is the author of Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy and Saintly Affects in Pakistan.
