Cold Cuts is an independent publishing and visual culture platform founded in 2017 by artist and filmmaker Mohamad Abdouni. It documents queer and oblique cultures across Southwest Asia, North Africa and their diasporas, across photography, film, sound and text. Its definition of queerness extends beyond sexuality and gender to include what is marginal, underground, intimate and often absent from official memory, focusing on subcultures across the region. Cold Cuts works with artists, writers and communities to publish work that is visually bold, politically sharp and rooted in lived experience.

Treat Me Like Your Mother is one of Cold Cuts’ longest-running and most significant projects. Built from oral histories and personal archives shared by trans women in Beirut, it has grown into a book, a series of exhibitions, a living photographic archive held by the Arab Image Foundation and a feature film that premiered at IDFA in 2025 and is currently touring internationally through festivals, cinemas and cultural institutions. The project focuses on preserving histories that might otherwise disappear, while allowing the people at their centre to speak in their own voices and on their own terms, providing a different perspective on the Lebanese civil war and the years that followed.

“Incredibly moving and compelling tales that would have otherwise been lost” — Dazed

“Documenting an important time in Arab Queer Culture”
— It’s Nice That

“This work is more important than ever” — ARTnews

“An ambidextrous creative force” — L’Orient Le Jour

“A different perspective on the Lebanese capital and its current state, exploring its social, cultural, political and religious climate” — Vogue

“Abdouni is making a militant archive in order to found the history of the Lebanese queer community” — Smithsonian Magazine

“A recognition and appreciation of history” — Agenda Culturel

“An artistic, cultural and human mission that perfectly documents the queer culture of the Arab world” — Folkr

“Abdouni is invested in chronicling not only the queer scene’s existence, but also its increasing wilfullness”
— The Guardian

“Abdouni writes the women back into a history that’s long excluded them” — huck