Challenging Islamophobia through Intermediality: Anida Yoeu Ali’s Performance Art

This article investigates Anida Yoeu Ali’s performance art as that of a Muslim, Khmer-American feminist global agitator, who challenges Islamophobia in the United States and transnationally by expanding her work “into ever-widening arenas” (Fraser, Justice Interruptus 82). Her performance projects formulate oppositional interpretations of Muslim “identities, interests, and needs” (Fraser, Justice Interruptus 82) in an increasingly Islamophobic era from the aftermath of 9/11 to Donald Trump’s presidency. Drawing on theories of convergence culture and intermediality, this article provides a close analysis of Ali’s performance projects. The first work is titled 1700% Project: Mistaken for Muslim (2010), a performance poetry clip that was directed by the Japanese American filmmaker Masahiro Sugano in 2010 and which widely circulates on the Internet. It stands out as a feminist, transnational critique of an unprecedented “undermining [of] Muslim voices” (Azam 125). The article also includes an exploration of a selection of performance acts from Ali’s The Red Chador Series (2015; 2018; 2020). I argue that by establishing discursive counternarratives the two works highlight the cultural potential of using intermediality to challenge private and public Islamophobia in a globally connected world. Thus, these works will be explored as a performative engagement with national, transnational, and gendered dimensions of Islamophobia.