This study theorizes that artivism acts as a causal mechanism linking global LGBTQ+ rights discourses to local cultural contexts and regional networks of solidarity in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. While existing scholarship has examined how activists in the Middle East and North Africa are often accused of importing Western cultural values, less attention has been paid to how they respond to and navigate these accusations in practice (Ritchie 2010; Amireh 2020; Hamdan 2015; Moussawi 2015). Even fewer studies have considered how artivism specifically functions in this process (Gayed 2020; Butler 2019). This study addresses that gap by exploring how artivism, which combines art and activism to advocate for social change or to make a political statement (Lemoine and Ouardi 2010), functions as a strategy for negotiating tensions between global rights discourses and local cultural norms.
Artivists in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria contend with publics who reject LGBTQ+ activism because they perceive it as Western cultural imperialism that is incompatible with local norms. Art functions as a medium for vernacularization (Engle 2006), allowing activists to translate human rights into local idioms that resonate with indigenous aesthetics, religion, and community values. Legal and rights frameworks often rely on universalist categories of sexuality that do not always align with local understandings (Borrillo 2020), and artivism helps bridge this gap. By embedding global rights language within culturally familiar symbols and narratives, artivism reduces perceptions of LGBTQ+ rights as “Western imports” (Massad 2007; Dalacoura 2014) and reframes them as locally legitimate expressions of identity and resistance.
This study relies on digital ethnography and digital interviews to examine how queer North African activists indigenize human rights discourses through art, cultivating transnational solidarity. The analysis focuses on case studies including Habibitch in Algeria, Khookah McQueer and the Mawjoudin Queer Film Festival in Tunisia, and Soufiane Ababri and Abdellah Taïa in Morocco. The findings demonstrate how artivism provides a creative outlet for resistance and fosters transnational solidarity by enabling activists to form regional networks across borders, a crucial strategy for sustaining activism in a region with varying levels of authoritarianism.
