Lama El Homaïssi lights up Joe’s Pub! Join Artistic Freedom Initiative for the second extraordinary performance in AFI’s festival lineup – Saturday, October 14th at 7:00pm at Joe’s Pub. Dedicated to safeguarding the right to artistic freedom, AFI provides pro bono legal services and resettlement assistance for international artists at risk.

BEAUTIFUL FORMS is a celebration of the extraordinary queer artists and fierce allies who are fundamental to the fight for artistic freedom worldwide. In her return to Joe’s Pub, Lama brings the incendiary debut of her solo cabaret: Not Harem Material. She weaves together storytelling and music to immerse audiences in a multisensory chronicle of her experiences as a Lebanese, immigrant actor in the United States. Lama is an artist in AFI’s residency program, SHIM:NYC, and a member of the Joe’s Pub Working Group 2022-2023.

Delivering a performance that is provocative, funny, and touching, Lama reflects on notions of identity, authenticity, and home all while playfully confronting monolithic Middle Eastern tropes in Western media. For more information, follow @artisticfreedominitiative. See you there!

More Info about Lama and the Westbeth Safe Haven Residency Program HERE

Join Artistic Freedom Initiative for their arts festival, BEAUTIFUL FORMS: QUEER ART UNBOUND – Friday, October 13th, Saturday, October 14th, and Wednesday, November 29th in NYC!

More Info: Joe’s Pub, NYC

Celebrate the extraordinary queer artists and fierce allies who are fundamental to the fight for artistic freedom worldwide with our friends at AFI. Dedicated to safeguarding the right to artistic freedom, AFI facilitates pro bono legal services and resettlement assistance to international artists at risk.

Featuring cutting edge artists Bia Ferreira (Brazil), Lama El Homaïssi (Lebanon), Faraz Arif Ansari (India), and Mehrdad Hasani (Iran), BEAUTIFUL FORMS demonstrates how queer musical, theatrical, and film narratives disrupt dangerous norms and uplift those that venerate free expression. This multidisciplinary, multi-day festival acknowledges that queer artists from countries or communities where sexuality, gender identity, and artistic freedom are suppressed face heightened levels of persecution, censorship, and forced displacement. BEAUTIFUL FORMS champions the rights to create, move, live, and love freely – unbound and without fear. For more information, follow @artisticfreedominitiative. See you there!

#beautifulforms #queerartunbound #artisticfreedominitiative