7×7 reports on underground queer art: street art, apartment shows and anonymous Telegram channels
Outlet 7×7 published an in-depth piece by journalist Svetlana Bronnikova about how queer artists across Russia’s regions continue to work under the ban on the so-called “LGBT movement” and laws against “propaganda”. Artists are being pushed underground — from night-time street art and apartment exhibitions to anonymous accounts and participation in foreign festivals.
What 7×7 reports
The editors compare the current situation to underground exhibitions in the late Soviet period: back then, art that did not fit the state ideology was shown in flats and studios; today it appears in closed chats, home-based spaces and through remote participation in festivals abroad.
For security reasons, 7×7 changes some names, does not mention specific galleries or collectives, and avoids detailed descriptions of the works themselves. The text also preserves “gender gaps” — special symbols used by some interviewees to make language more gender-neutral, in line with their identities.
How homophobic laws push artists into queer expression
One of the main characters is Maxim, an anonymous street artist from a city in Russia’s Northwestern Federal District. He goes out on night-time missions in what he jokingly calls his “criminal outfit” — all black, hood up, mask on — and uses sculptures, stickers and graffiti to talk about repression in Russia, the war in Ukraine and LGBTQ+ issues. Maxim says he consciously looks to Soviet dissidents for inspiration and fully understands the risk: “I’m hiding in one set of bushes; the cops could be hiding in another.”
Daniil, an artist from a Siberian city of over a million people, previously worked mostly with themes of silence, the body and fragmented identity, keeping queerness abstract. After the full-scale invasion and tightening of anti-LGBTQ+ laws, he and his colleagues created a one-page queer newspaper with stories about Siberian queer art, anonymous interviews and letters from Soviet queer people. They printed it at home and left copies in public toilets and bookcrossing shelves, hoping it would reach “TV-only” audiences — including openly homophobic residents — and simply show that queer people exist in their city.
How does regional queer art looks
Gender studies researcher Kolya Nakhshunov tells 7×7 that “queer art” is not a strict academic term, but a broad label for art that works with a sense of otherness and challenges gender and sexual norms. In Russia’s current context, he says, it is always about “extreme vulnerability” that artists process through their own experience.
The article recalls that before the 2022 blanket ban on “LGBT propaganda”, exhibitions with queer works were held regularly, and from 2008 to 2023 St Petersburg hosted QueerFest, organised by LGBTQ+ group Vyhod (“Coming Out”). After 2013, organisers faced bomb hoaxes, raids by homophobic activists and even an attack in which phosphine gas canisters were thrown into a venue’s ventilation system; several people ended up in hospital.
In the regions, queer art largely survived through self-organisation: independent spaces, apartment galleries and ad-hoc shows in garages or outdoor locations. Curator Natalya, from a regional capital in the northwest, says that before the war she curated open exhibitions with queer works in independent venues where LGBT flags permanently hung in the windows. After 2022 those spaces either closed or switched to patriotic programming; the founder of one of them was later labelled a “foreign agent” by the Justice Ministry.
There is no consensus within the queer scene either. Nakhshunov notes ongoing debates over whether cisgender heterosexual artists can make “queer art” without appropriating queer experience. Natalya, who is bisexual and polyamorous, says she often feels like a “minority within a minority”: some queer people did not consider her — or other bisexual artists she invited — “proper LGBT”.
Apartment galleries, anonymous channels and fear of prosecution
According to Vladislav, a queer artist from a northern regional capital in European Russia, most independent galleries in his city did not survive the pandemic; those that did increasingly show “official” art. As he puts it, “priests with censers come to the gallery more and more often and rejoice over the annexation of Crimea and the war.” Organisers of exhibitions and poetry readings now ask visitors not to film or post anything on social media and quietly scrutinise unfamiliar faces, trying to spot operatives from the Interior Ministry’s Centre for Combating Extremism.
Some artists move exhibitions into their homes. Vladislav’s flat — and several others in the city — doubles as an improvised gallery where friends show anti-war and queer works “for their own”, without public announcements or posters. Street artist Maxim has given up public authorship entirely: he signs nothing and avoids social media, fearing that his pieces could be classified as “discrediting” the army or as LGBT “propaganda”. His works exist on walls only for a few hours before city services or residents paint them over.
Younger artists, 7×7 notes, are turning to anonymity. Artists from Tula, Novosibirsk and other cities delete queer content from their old VK pages and start closed Telegram channels or X (Twitter) accounts, carefully vetting each subscriber. Yekaterina, one of the heroines, runs an open public page without queer content and a closed channel with queer comics, but keeps drawing because, she says, “representation matters; it’s important to show people that being queer is normal.”
International festivals and the role of LGBTQ+ organisations
Under censorship and the threat of administrative or criminal cases, more Russian queer artists are finding audiences through foreign initiatives. Daniil from Siberia and several colleagues showed their work remotely at the queer festival “Resistance” in Paris, organised by grassroots group Center T together with French partners. The exhibition featured works by 35 artists still living in Russia and 51 in exile. According to Center T’s head, Yan Dvorkin, almost all of them spoke through their art about resistance — via themes of lost homes, violence, isolation and life under constant fear.
German NGO Quarteera e.V., which supports LGBTQ+ refugees and migrants from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, tells 7×7 that its open calls for artists regularly receive dozens of applications from Russia. Marina, an artist from Siberia who also sent works to the Paris festival, stresses that voices from inside Russia are particularly important for European exhibitions: they allow those whom the state forces into silence to be heard and show what queer people are actually facing at home.
Nakhshunov warns that censorship of queer representation is not only an aesthetic problem but a direct threat to mental health: reducing the space of visibility increases isolation and the risk of serious psychological harm and even death. Marina, meanwhile, believes the current freeze is temporary: “just as suddenly as everything went quiet, it will flare up again,” she says. In her view, people inside Russia are starving for independent art, while those in exile are starving for Russia — and that tension could turn into a powerful shared impulse if returning artists and those who stayed eventually meet again.
What 7×7 reports
The editors compare the current situation to underground exhibitions in the late Soviet period: back then, art that did not fit the state ideology was shown in flats and studios; today it appears in closed chats, home-based spaces and through remote participation in festivals abroad.
For security reasons, 7×7 changes some names, does not mention specific galleries or collectives, and avoids detailed descriptions of the works themselves. The text also preserves “gender gaps” — special symbols used by some interviewees to make language more gender-neutral, in line with their identities.
How homophobic laws push artists into queer expression
One of the main characters is Maxim, an anonymous street artist from a city in Russia’s Northwestern Federal District. He goes out on night-time missions in what he jokingly calls his “criminal outfit” — all black, hood up, mask on — and uses sculptures, stickers and graffiti to talk about repression in Russia, the war in Ukraine and LGBTQ+ issues. Maxim says he consciously looks to Soviet dissidents for inspiration and fully understands the risk: “I’m hiding in one set of bushes; the cops could be hiding in another.”
Daniil, an artist from a Siberian city of over a million people, previously worked mostly with themes of silence, the body and fragmented identity, keeping queerness abstract. After the full-scale invasion and tightening of anti-LGBTQ+ laws, he and his colleagues created a one-page queer newspaper with stories about Siberian queer art, anonymous interviews and letters from Soviet queer people. They printed it at home and left copies in public toilets and bookcrossing shelves, hoping it would reach “TV-only” audiences — including openly homophobic residents — and simply show that queer people exist in their city.
How does regional queer art looks
Gender studies researcher Kolya Nakhshunov tells 7×7 that “queer art” is not a strict academic term, but a broad label for art that works with a sense of otherness and challenges gender and sexual norms. In Russia’s current context, he says, it is always about “extreme vulnerability” that artists process through their own experience.
The article recalls that before the 2022 blanket ban on “LGBT propaganda”, exhibitions with queer works were held regularly, and from 2008 to 2023 St Petersburg hosted QueerFest, organised by LGBTQ+ group Vyhod (“Coming Out”). After 2013, organisers faced bomb hoaxes, raids by homophobic activists and even an attack in which phosphine gas canisters were thrown into a venue’s ventilation system; several people ended up in hospital.
In the regions, queer art largely survived through self-organisation: independent spaces, apartment galleries and ad-hoc shows in garages or outdoor locations. Curator Natalya, from a regional capital in the northwest, says that before the war she curated open exhibitions with queer works in independent venues where LGBT flags permanently hung in the windows. After 2022 those spaces either closed or switched to patriotic programming; the founder of one of them was later labelled a “foreign agent” by the Justice Ministry.
There is no consensus within the queer scene either. Nakhshunov notes ongoing debates over whether cisgender heterosexual artists can make “queer art” without appropriating queer experience. Natalya, who is bisexual and polyamorous, says she often feels like a “minority within a minority”: some queer people did not consider her — or other bisexual artists she invited — “proper LGBT”.
Apartment galleries, anonymous channels and fear of prosecution
According to Vladislav, a queer artist from a northern regional capital in European Russia, most independent galleries in his city did not survive the pandemic; those that did increasingly show “official” art. As he puts it, “priests with censers come to the gallery more and more often and rejoice over the annexation of Crimea and the war.” Organisers of exhibitions and poetry readings now ask visitors not to film or post anything on social media and quietly scrutinise unfamiliar faces, trying to spot operatives from the Interior Ministry’s Centre for Combating Extremism.
Some artists move exhibitions into their homes. Vladislav’s flat — and several others in the city — doubles as an improvised gallery where friends show anti-war and queer works “for their own”, without public announcements or posters. Street artist Maxim has given up public authorship entirely: he signs nothing and avoids social media, fearing that his pieces could be classified as “discrediting” the army or as LGBT “propaganda”. His works exist on walls only for a few hours before city services or residents paint them over.
Younger artists, 7×7 notes, are turning to anonymity. Artists from Tula, Novosibirsk and other cities delete queer content from their old VK pages and start closed Telegram channels or X (Twitter) accounts, carefully vetting each subscriber. Yekaterina, one of the heroines, runs an open public page without queer content and a closed channel with queer comics, but keeps drawing because, she says, “representation matters; it’s important to show people that being queer is normal.”
International festivals and the role of LGBTQ+ organisations
Under censorship and the threat of administrative or criminal cases, more Russian queer artists are finding audiences through foreign initiatives. Daniil from Siberia and several colleagues showed their work remotely at the queer festival “Resistance” in Paris, organised by grassroots group Center T together with French partners. The exhibition featured works by 35 artists still living in Russia and 51 in exile. According to Center T’s head, Yan Dvorkin, almost all of them spoke through their art about resistance — via themes of lost homes, violence, isolation and life under constant fear.
German NGO Quarteera e.V., which supports LGBTQ+ refugees and migrants from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, tells 7×7 that its open calls for artists regularly receive dozens of applications from Russia. Marina, an artist from Siberia who also sent works to the Paris festival, stresses that voices from inside Russia are particularly important for European exhibitions: they allow those whom the state forces into silence to be heard and show what queer people are actually facing at home.
Nakhshunov warns that censorship of queer representation is not only an aesthetic problem but a direct threat to mental health: reducing the space of visibility increases isolation and the risk of serious psychological harm and even death. Marina, meanwhile, believes the current freeze is temporary: “just as suddenly as everything went quiet, it will flare up again,” she says. In her view, people inside Russia are starving for independent art, while those in exile are starving for Russia — and that tension could turn into a powerful shared impulse if returning artists and those who stayed eventually meet again.