Panel V: Negotiating (In)Visibility

At the Inaugural Conference of the Institute of Slavic and Eastern European Studies (ISOS) at the University of Zurich, May 6th to 8th, 2026

The panel examines how communities on the short end of hegemonic power relations develop (in)visibility and agency below a threshold of full-volume activism. The panel dedicates itself to LGBTQIA+ minorities in post-Soviet republics, targeted by the so-called anti-Gender campaigns of the populist right, as well as to the activities of artistic underground communities across Eastern Europe and Central Asia that have been marginalized by state and broader systemic censorship, as well as mainstream narratives of art historiography. It discusses attempts of self-assertion that duck the blows of full-contact political confrontation but still introduce new stitch patterns into the fabric of society. It also explores dominant interpretative patterns within and outside the respective communities that reproduce invisibilities—of artistic, political, gender-specific, geographical, and other positions—and thus generate through entrenched narratives “invisibility squared”.