Introduction

The focus of this book is on the many far from predictable transformative political processes on gender, sexuality and coloniality that grow out of the broad range of bodies and actors engaged in politics outside the hegemonic order and in everyday activities. These processes are not conducted by states, governments or transnational nongovernmental organisations; rather, they are examples of politics in-between states, organisations and national imagined communities. In this first chapter we will introduce some of the main themes, regarding these processes we in our joint research programme have worked on over the last couple of years

We were here, and we still are : negotiations of political space through unsanctioned art

In this chapter, we examine the work of the Sámi artist Anders Sunna and the Egyptian artist Bahia Shebab in order to address strategies of artistic criticism of the relations between states and their citizens. Both artists are protesting against contemporary processes relating to space, state and nation, and they express themselves in ways that are embedded in the aesthetics of unsanctioned street art. This expression constitutes an interesting form of politics, situated somewhere in-between, or alongside, party politics and the practices of civil society. Our aim is to describe and discuss what we see as specifically effective and dynamic themes in the chosen artwork — the use of space as object and methodology, and the production of iconic imageries within fantasies of protest. The stencils and spray paintings of Shehab and Sunna offer us keys to exploring efforts to artistically reveal and dismantle national and neocolonial power.The futures of genders and sexualities. Cultural products, transnational spaces and emerging communitie