Ana Masreya talks of the Egyptian revolution, in her high heels during cabaret performances in Brooklyn, attended by immigrant Arab feminists who take the stage and lecture during the show. DaGeG, a collective of queer Arab artists formed in Berlin is trying to theorize how to say queer in Arabic, and what performance has got to do with a discourse on politics. An Egyptian activist commits suicide in exile in Canada. An author in Egypt writes under a pseudonym to problematize the pains of queer Arabs in exile and their alienation from current discourses. And in London, Iraqi performance artist and drag queen Glamrou is redefining political activism today while addressing both Islamophobia in Europe and Jihadism. With DaGeG drawing from critical literary theory and translation studies, and Glamrou using quantum physics and history of Islam, this generation of queer Arab artists in exile and in the diaspora are constructing complex theoretical frameworks to look at intersectional questions of identity formation outside of the western canon. They are doing this away from seminal works that have shaped how we theorize gender and its performance today in western academia. Is it a matter of language and terminology, that renders the question of ‘queer Arab art’ urgent and volatile? Or is it grappling with a colonial past, renewed by seemingly neocolonial epistemologies? This paper documents the work of key radical queer Arab artists in the 21st century, situates this work within the 10th anniversary of the Syrian war while problematizing the term ‘Arab Spring’, and opens up a discussion on terminology, canons and colonialism. It works through the scholarship of theorists and academics Arafat Sadallah, Mariem Guelloz, Ismail Fayed and Abdullah Al Bayyari. It argues for nascent Arab contributions to the fields of gender and sexuality as they intersect with political discourses and nation building narratives in the Arabic speaking region. It addresses the image of Arabs and Muslims in Europe today as they continue to be vilified in the media, and alienated by new Islamophobic laws. Through surveying the practices of an invisible community, marginalized both in the Arab region and in exile, for not conforming neither with capitalist contemporary queer aesthetics nor with regional grand narratives, or with immigrant communities identity formation processes, this paper aims to pay respect to the radical politics these artists perform, present, and theorize.