In Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan, queer communities are navigating a collision between newly assertive nationalism, resurgent Islam, and the Soviet-era legacy that shaped both. This research examines how regimes of sexuality have shifted across the Muslim-majority republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia since the political upheavals of the 1980s–90s, and how artists and cultural institutions are reimagining gender and belonging in that context. The gap is conceptual: Western and colonial frameworks—such as “the Caucasus,” “Central Asia,” or “the Turkic world”—often fail to capture how sexuality and faith actually interact in these societies. By studying thriving queer cultures alongside state-backed heritage institutions in Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan, the project aims to build a more accurate, locally grounded understanding of Islam and sexual diversity. This is fundamental, curiosity-driven research in the humanities. It will produce frameworks and case studies useful to university researchers and museum curators. There is no immediate practical application, but a clearer picture of how national identity, religion, and sexuality co-evolve could inform future cultural policy, heritage programming, or public discourse in post-Soviet Muslim societies—and challenge the assumptions that outsiders bring to those conversations.
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Religion plays an important role in the construction of gender and sexualities, and subsequently, in the production of the frameworks of belonging, nationhood, and global citizenship. The research will investigate changing regimes of sexuality in Muslim Republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia that underwent multiple transitions in the 1980s-90s. The term 'transitions' signifies two interconnected processes: (1) political and cultural re-orientations that occurred in the context of shifting centres of power; and (2) artistic re-imaginings of cultural heritage and creation of new practices in the context of changing regimes of sexuality. Through the lens of national and inter-regional exchanges, the research will examine the role of gender and sexualities in the Muslim Republics' search for a national identity under the conditions of newly embraced nationalism and resurgent religiosity. By focusing on two cases—Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan—where there are thriving queer cultures and robust institutions invested in protecting cultural heritage, the research will produce a more inclusive and more nuanced framework to understand the relationship between Islam and changing regimes of sexuality. The research will also review critically the colonial-era concepts of 'the Caucasus', 'Central Asia', the Russian 'near abroad' and 'the Turkic world', and thus test theoretical potentialities of de-colonial geo-cultural affiliations such as SWANA. The research will produce outputs that will be of use to researchers and curators, working in universities and art institutions.
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