Rave into the Future: Art in Motion
This fall, the Asian Art Museum presents Rave into the Future: Art in Motion, the first exhibition celebrating the collective joy and resilience found on the dancefloors of West Asian diaspora communities, opening on October 24, 2025, in the museum’s Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Pavilion.
Featuring women and queer artists from the West Asia diaspora based in the United States and Europe, Rave into the Future: Art in Motion is inspired by the modern rave culture of West Asia, centering the dancefloor as a space of community, belonging and empowered resistance. The importance of this exhibition has already garnered attention from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in the form of two supporting grants. Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and exhibition curator Naz Cuguoğlu received a curatorial research fellowship grant from the foundation early last year, and the Asian Art Museum was recently awarded an additional grant to mount the exhibition.
“When I first moved to the US from Turkiye, I was struck by how much the Western narratives of West Asia involved Orientalism and a fetishization of pain,” says Naz Cuguoğlu, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and exhibition curator. “It was important to me to create a space for narratives that build solidarity through joy, pleasure, and laughter as a way to reclaim agency. These artists and their work do just that; they highlight the critical interplay between visual arts, music, dance, and the formation of community throughout the cultural sphere of West Asia and its diaspora.”
Throughout the exhibition, artworks by local artists join global voices to create a multisensory space that envelopes audiences in sonic and visual experiences. A commission from Oakland-based Arab Persian American artist Sahar Khoury includes a multimedia sculpture with a working DJ deck; local Asian, Asian American, and Asian diaspora DJs will be highlighted as the installation is activated throughout the exhibition.
For Your Eyes Only by Los Angeles-based Yemeni American artist Yasmine Nasser Diaz is a multimedia installation that bridges generations of dance aesthetics — and pays homage to the impromptu dancefloors of domestic spaces — through a highly personal bedroom scene. Visitors will immediately notice a projection of dancers, clipped from social media accounts. A second video playing on a 90s-era TV offers a montage of news clips featuring women-led protests from around the Global South, surrounded by protest ephemera, all drenched in the glow of pink neon and a rose-colored disco ball. Audiences are invited to step into the space, complete with rug and bedroom furniture, and to feel part of its personal, safe atmosphere. The space will also be activated with dance performances during the run of the exhibition.
At the heart of the exhibition lies a dancefloor: London-based Lebanese American artist Joe Namy’s Disguise as Dancefloor is nearly 100 square feet of copper tiles that serves as a foundation of dance and exuberance, while acting as a record of every person who touches it. A material embraced across many cultures for its restorative properties — whether alchemical or through sonic resonance — the copper dancefloor is both a representation of the healing that happens among diasporic communities on the dancefloor and an invitation to visitors to enjoy a moment of rejuvenation through dance. This space will also be activated during the exhibition through dance and DJ performances.
Two local artists explore the legacy of women musicians in the West Asia region. Khoury’s Untitled (radio tower with accessories) is a nearly 20-foot-tall installation reminiscent of a radio tower. It pays tribute to legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, whose voice reached millions through her live broadcasts. Collaborating with sound artists Lara Sarkissian and Esra Canoğulları (8ULENTINA), Khoury presents a layered audio work that deconstructs Umm Kulthum’s “Al Atlal (The Ruins)” and weaves in a recording of Khoury’s late aunt singing at a family gathering. Meanwhile, Baghdad-born, San Francisco-based artist Maryam Yousif’s sculpture — an oversized cassette tape presented on a stage with palm trees, honoring Assyrian artist Juliana Jendo — elevates this ephemeral object to an iconic monument. Named after the production company Ishtar, a nod to the ancient Mesopotamian goddess, the piece playfully reclaims pop culture as a future relic.
Community and humor serve as powerful connectors in several works. Moroccan-born, Brooklyn-based artist Meriem Bennani’s video Party on the CAPS follows Fiona, a talking crocodile, through a futuristic island refugee camp where teleportation has replaced air travel. The story unfolds at a jubilant party filled with drumming, dancing, and a rapping MC, offering a surreal but tender portrait of cultural continuity. Spiral, a collaboration between Qatari-American artist Sophia al Maria and Los Angeles-based Kuwaiti composer Fatima al Qadiri — coiners of the term Gulf Futurism — invites the audience to feel the trembling bass frequencies of subwoofers in their bodies. Featuring Zadiel Samsaz and Eli El Sultan performing a belly dance-off, this video installation pays homage to the dancefloor as an underground site of queer defiance, body positivity, and joy. Taking the form of a horror-comedy, Um Al Naar (Mother of Fire) by United Arab Emirates–born, Brooklyn-based artist Farah Al Qasimi centers on a jinn (supernatural spirit) who, fearing her fading relevance, reasserts herself as a vital presence within the community by dancing alongside other women, using her body as a site of self-governance. Projected onto wallpaper that evokes a rave-lit living room, the work is accompanied by photographs of a Khaleeji Hair Dance and the sound of screams — gestures of cathartic release.
The collective aspect of rave culture is further explored in Oakland-based, Iranian-Kurdish artist Morehshin Allahyari’s The Queer Withdrawings. Inspired by Islamic mythology and decorative mirrorwork used in Iranian shrines, the installation features mirrored surfaces that reflect a dance of mythical figures. Two sculptures—Qareen I and Qareen II (“constant companions”)—stand as protectors and healers, presiding over a space of queer gathering and ritual.
The exhibition concludes with the glimmering chaos of the after-party. In Puff Out, :mentalKLINIK (Yasemin Baydar and Birol Demir, a Brussels-based artist duo from Istanbul) unleash a fleet of robotic vacuum cleaners that roam a glitter-covered space, drawing in and redistributing the glitter as they go. These machines animate the room with playful unpredictability. The pair’s additional architectural interventions within the museum extend the spirit of the rave — immersive, collective, and playfully unruly.
“Inspired by the creative experimentation in the rave culture of West Asia, this exhibition is itself experimental. It asks what we can learn from the autonomy, healing, and bliss that unfolds on the dance floor, and how we can build both tight-knit and expansive communities,” says Cuguoğlu. “We’re excited to activate the space through programs that not only highlight the ten artists in this show, but other Bay Area performing artists, creating a space for kinship and connection through difference.”
“This is an exciting opportunity to engage with audiences in new ways by translating a performance-based cultural phenomenon into a uniquely dynamic exhibition that conveys the high-energy, vibrant mood of the dancefloor,” says Soyoung Lee, The Barbara Bass Bakar Director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum. “An exhibition focused on West Asia is also an important opportunity to expand how audiences think about Asia as a whole—while simultaneously tapping into the universality of joyful collective dance that resonates deeply across many communities.”
The artist list includes Morehshin Allahyari, Sophia al Maria, Farah Al Qasimi, Fatima Al Qadiri, Meriem Bennani, Yasmine Nasser Diaz, Sahar Khoury, :mentalKLINIK, Joe Namy, and Maryam Yousif.
Rave Into the Future: Art in Motion is organized by the Asian Art Museum. Sustained support generously provided by the Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Endowment Fund for Exhibitions and the Kao/Williams Contemporary Art Exhibitions Fund. Major support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is provided by the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation.
Lead image: Performance by TCS; activation of For Your Eyes Only by Yasmine Nasser Diaz // Photo by Tracy Nguyen