Symposium: «Orienting Desires»

“Deviant Ornaments” and the research network The Space Between Us brings together artists, scholars, and cultural workers from distinct post-and settler-colonial contexts to share insights on their practices, methodologies, and desires.

The aim of the gathering is to centre queer, decolonial, and ornamental frameworks for knowledge production, while mapping continuities and discontinuities between different contexts and practices. 

Read more about the contributors

The interactive and digital art arcade is also open to visitors on Friday and Saturday

Schedule 

Thursday January 22nd, 2026

9:30-10:30 
Opening remarks 
Welcome from your hosts and organizers Dr. Noor Bhangu + Dr. Julie Nagam and Nora Ceciliedatter Nerdrum, the National Museum of Norway. 
 
10:45-12:00 
Queering Islamic Art Histories 
Moderator: Dr. Noor Bhangu in dialogue with Damien Ajavon, Rah Eleh + Kasra Jalilipour 

These artists reflect on their creative processes in creating new works for Deviant Ornaments, engaging with visual and textual materials from the Islamic world. From erotic manual traditions to spiritual motifs, their work demonstrates the continuities between past and present histories of sexuality.  
 
13:15- 14:30 
Decolonizing Archives 
Moderator: Hanan Benammar in conversation with Dr. Anjali Arondekar, Pamila Matharu, Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Dr. Sa'ed Atshan + Karoline Trollvik 

These artists, cultural workers, and historians offer critical insights from their respective practices to examine the queer and decolonial possibilities inherent in archives and archival practices.  
 
15:00-16:15 
Digital + interactive artistic interventions 
Moderator: Wendy Alakpodia in dialogue with Gabbah Baya, Brendan Tang, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley + Mohsen Hazrati  

These artists reflect on how and why it's important to create interactive and playable work that is breaking new ground to visualize difficult histories and materialize alternative digital futures. 
 
16:15-17:00 

100 Tikis
Film by Dan Taulapapa McMullin

This is a 45 minute film/video appropriation art piece, part of an ongoing installation of works on the intersection of tiki kitsch and indigenous sovereignty. 100 Tikis looks at Hollywood, colonialism, gender, militarism, and activism, through films, cartoons, songs, paintings, photographs, television shows, tourist ads, military propaganda, pornography, tiki bars, activist videos, home movies, and social media. This is the artist's approach to queering domaninant archives from the perspective of an indigenous Samoan non-binary Fa’afafine.  

Friday January 23rd, 2026 

9:30-10:45 
Histories of Sexuality 
Moderator: Dr. Rana Issa in dialogue with Dr. Andrew Gayed, Dr. Elizabeth Kerekere, Katja Fjeld + Dr. Howard Chiang 

This conversation considers the practice of historizing sexuality across distinct regional contexts, which includes critical negotiations with historical material and methodological approaches, as well as the responsibilities of broadening the discipline through global and transcultural perspectives. 
 
11:00-12:15 
Ornaments + Queer Aesthetics 
Moderator: Itzel Esquivel in dialogue with Dr. Natasha Bissonauth, Dr. Alexander G. Weheliye, Meera Sethi, Banyi Huang 

This conversation brings together artists and scholars involved in ornamental aesthetics, spanning different articulations of queer diasporic culture, to share insights on ornamental strategies and gestures that are latent with radical and disruptive potential.  
 
13:30-14:30
WE CAN'T KEEP GOING LIKE THIS
Performance with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

An interactive performance in which audiences will process their emotions, fears and worries about the future with each other, mediated through an interactive story about building a new world. 

How do we build a new world together when we cant see eye to eye? 

14:30-16:00 
Interactive and digital art arcade  
Library + Social Space 

Tickets are discounted for students and artists. For any accessibility needs or questions, please contact the National Museum.