Draft:Kenza Mala Badi

Kenza Mala Badi (born 1992) is a Moroccan LGBT rights activist and performance artist.

Early life
As a child, Badi would sometimes put on her mother's lipstick and dresses while her mother was out of the house.

Her first experience with the LGBT community was when she made gay and transgender friends at age 15. Her friends taught her the slang used by the community, but it wasn't until doing her own independent research that she learned about LGBT movements in the Middle East, including Kif-Kif and Helem, and the LGBT community in Europe. In the following years, Badi took to cruising in the parks of Casablanca during the evenings.

Badi was kicked out of their home at age 20, after coming out to her family during a Ramadan dinner and being assaulted by her father and brother. Afterwards, Badi was homeless in Rabat for several months.

Activism
Badi was first introduced to activism through Casablanca's punk and metal communities.

Badi took part in the February 20 Movement during the Arab Spring, during which she carried, at times, signs saying "No to Article 489", and a rainbow flag. She also took to reading philosophical and political works by Mahdi Amel, Mehdi Ben Barka, Simone de Beauvoir, Marx, and Sartre.

Badi also helped found the Aswat Collective, a Moroccan group fighting against sexuality and gender-based discrimination.

After settling in the Netherlands as a refugee, Badi founded Sehaq, a group for trans and queer refugees, and Marokkueer Zawya, an organization for queer Amazighs in the diaspora.

Art
Badi has written poems and created short films. One film, Spaces of Exile, was shown at the Amsterdam Transgender Film Festival in 2021. Her photographs have also been exhibited, at the Trunk Hotel Gallery as part of the Q(WE)R festival in Tokyo in 2022.

Performance art
In 2020, Badi performed ¨Labyeeka Ya Hussein", a piece exploring queer Muslims' struggle with their sexuality and faith, as part of the festival “Queer and Now: From Stonewall to Queertopia”.

In 2021, she performed "Collective Healing from Colonial Memories" at the 10-day festival "Cartographies of affect - in the queer and now".

In 2022, Badi performed a piece entitled "War on Bodies", which explored Morocco's colonial history.

Personal life
Badi has identified as both non-binary and a trans woman; she uses she/her pronouns. She is Muslim, and considers herself an intersectional feminist and a decolonial socialist.

Badi has lived in Amsterdam, the Netherlands as a refugee since 2017. In 2021, Badi was attacked by several men in Amsterdam-West, but received only minor physical injuries.