Alexa Kurmanov, PhD Student, Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

This event will be held over Zoom. Register here.

What does intersectionality as praxis look like in Kyrgyzstan? Grassroots feminist, LGBTQ and transfeminist groups in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan are creating a unique space for themselves through various community art projects. The 2019 Feminnale Art Exhibit was one such meticulously curated space that provided possibilities for “subaltern voices to speak” (Spivak 1988) on the everyday experiences of women in Kyrgyzstan and throughout the region.

By centering the “everyday”  experiences of women, this feminist art project challenged the monolithic and homogenized categories of “woman” imposed by both the West and Russia on (post)socialist Central Asia, opening up further insights on race, gender, and sexuality in the socialist past and (post)socialist future.

About Alexa: My research focuses on intersectionality and the category of “woman” in (post)socialist Central Asia, more specifically in urban and rural Kyrgyzstan. I am interested in categories of queerness, Blackness, colonialism, and Trans and feminist activism in Central Asia and Russia. My research interests stem from previous experiences in studying the global coalition between Black Nationalism in the United States and the anti-racist campaigns in the Soviet Union in the early part of the 20th century— offering insights on the figure of Blackness/the Black identity in the Soviet and post-Soviet space.