Majlis Al Jinn: A Queer Gathering

 
Author Morehshin Allahyari
Publisher Irrelevant Press

Occupier of ruins and deserts, acting not quite as complete companion or outright adversary, at once tangibly human and mysteriously animal—the stuff of smokeless fire—the Jinn is so much more than just a trickster spirit. They occupy a unique place not only within Islamic folklore, but in our conception of human-ness itself. Over the course of nearly a decade, artist Morehshin Allahyari has combed through archives across three continents and thousands of years, searching for those fleeting and mystical visions of the Jinn. In their book Majlis Al Jinn: A Queer Gathering, they seek to revisit the Jinn through the lens of an ever-shifting Queer identity; the beautiful, the monstrous, the morally ambivalent, the contradictory, the constantly-regenerative. The book, printed and published by Irrelevant Press, collects these striking reflections of humanity in somber black and silver, as haunting as they are beautiful. “I wish for the Jinn to be seen as it wants to be seen; and for us to learn from their agency: as mystic, fearsome, honorable, and evolving relational beings that resist the default, the normal, the rational, and the limited imaginations our current world has accepted as the only possibility.” 

Morehshin Allahyari (Persian: موره‌شین اللهیاری‎), is a Bay Area based Iranian-Kurdish artist and an assistant professor of Digital Media Art at Stanford University. She uses 3D simulation, video, code, sculpture, and digital fabrication as tools to re-figure myth and history. Through archival practices and storytelling, her work weaves together complex counternarratives in opposition to the lasting influence of Western technological colonialism in the context of MENA (Middle East and North Africa).

 Softcover
8 x 8 inches
70 pages
2026