Queer Art as an Instrument of Sociopolitical Change in Georgia

On 17 September 2024, Georgia’s parliament approved the ruling party’s legislative proposal that seeks to curtail the rights of queer people in the country. The package of anti-queer bills seeks to erase “LGBT propaganda” from public spaces, educational settings, and broadcasting. It also prohibits gender-affirming medical treatments and legal transitioning for trans people or adoptions of children by LGBTQI+ people. The timing is not insignificant: the next general election is scheduled for 26 October of this year, and the move is thus widely seen as Georgian Dream’s attempt to stoke up and exploit queerphobic sentiments to score political points.

The legislative assault marks a new chapter in the struggle for queer rights in the country. While the country’s elites have never been strangers to queerphobic rhetoric and tolerated or condoned violence against queers, this flagrant exploitation of the legislative power to erase queers and make the conditions in which they live even more inhospitable presents a new reality.

This roundtable will invite three Georgian queer artists, Giorgi Kikonishvili, Marika Kochiashvili, and Uta Bekaia, to reflect on whether and how art can be used to enact sociopolitical change in the current conditions. They represent different approaches and disciplines, but their work reflects two key points. First is the primacy of the context: solutions cannot be imported from the West without regard to the local history, culture, and politics. Since societies do not follow the same trajectory, any theory of change must be based on an understanding of the situation on the ground. Second, and consequently, the liberal framework of LGBTQI+ rights is poorly equipped to address the most urgent issues many queer people in the country face: violence, poverty, homelessness, or hindered access to health services, to name a few. It also fails to appreciate how institutions such as tradition or religion – exploited in anti-queer campaigns – can be repurposed to serve as a source of empowerment and perhaps even to establish a common ground with the national collectivity.

This roundtable is part of PPV (Perverting the Power Vertical: Politics & Aesthetics) a seminar and events platform running under the auspices of the UCL SSEES FRINGE Centre.

About the speakers:

Marika Kochiashvili is a London-based Georgian queer photographer and sculptor whose work explores sexuality and intimacy through close attention to bodies.

Giorgi Kikonishvili is a Georgian queer activist, publicist, music promoter, and co-founder of the Creative Collective Spectrum, a union of artists, researchers and publicists which studies the currents of Queer sexuality, emotions, politics and social life.

Uta Bekaia is a Georgian multi-media artist based in New York and Tbilisi, whose work is a speculative recreation of ancestral rituals restaged for a Queer utopian future.

The roundtable will be introduced and moderated by David Rypel, PhD candidate at UCL SSEES. David’s ethnographic research explored what is involved in living a “secure life” as a queer person in Georgia.