‘Deviant Ornaments’ at Oslo’s Nasjonalmuseet brings together more than 40 objects from the past 1,000 years alongside contemporary art.
Image: Taner Ceylan’s Fake World (2011) © Taner Ceylan. Photo: Uli Holz, courtesy Christen Sveaas’ Kunststiftelse
A new exhibition opening at the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) of Norway in Oslo this week breaks new ground by exploring a challenging art historical subject: queer desires and practices in the visual cultures of the Islamic world. Deviant Ornaments (27 November-15 March 2026)—curated by Noor Bhangu, a South Asian curator and scholar based in Norway—brings together more than 40 works from the past 1,000 years, connecting historical traditions and items with the works of 12 contemporary artists such as London-born Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Toronto-based Alize Zorlutuna.
Artist Shahzia Sikander’s bronze figures, Promiscuous Intimacies (2020) combine South Asian and European traditions, depicting an 11th-century sandstone sculpture of a Devata, a divine deity, and the figure of Venus from Agnolo Bronzino’s An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (1540-46). Turkish artist Taner Ceylan’s Fake World painting (2011) shows a semi-nude male figure clad in a gold robe.
Shahzia Sikander’s Promiscuous Intimacies (2020) © Shahzia Sikander. Photo” Adam Reich, courtesy Sean Kelly, New York / Los Angeles
“Our hope is to visualise a queer genealogy of Islamic art history, through which the public gains insight into diverse cultures of sexuality that have unfolded across the historical and contemporary Islamic world. In the contemporary Islamic world, we are also bringing into relation queer diasporas across North America, Europe and other parts of the world,” Bhangu tells The Art Newspaper.
The exhibition timespan covers a millennium because “the over-reliance on contemporary works [in other projects and exhibitions]… suggests that homosexuality and queer desires are solely the products of the current postcolonial era [and] thus inheritors of only Western models of sexuality”, adds Bhangu.
Historic objects featured include a Safavid textile by an unknown artist (1567); Ali Ghulam Khanezad’s Armband with gold and enamel inlay (around 1820), which depicts Prince Tahmasp Mirza, grandson of the ruling 18th-century Fath Ali Shah in Iran; and two wall tiles dating from 13th-century Iran, drawn from the National Museum’s collection.
