ABSTRACT
The chapter addresses queerness and its various manifestations in Polish visual arts during the mid- to late period of the People’s Republic of Poland (1970-1989). It underscores two parallel modes—the official and the clandestine—in which queer-inflected visual arts phenomena operated. Examples illustrating this double framework include work by Krzysztof Niemczyk, Krzysztof Jung, and Ryszard Kisiel. Within the official art scene, founded upon the professional circulation and display of artworks, non-heteronormativity was either absent or it was double-coded and otherwise alluded to. At the same time, queer visibility existed in the alternative niche of amateur and quasi-artistic practices, which are only today recognizable as artistic activities in their own right. The chapter unveils a wide spectrum of practices ranging from invisibility to visibility and thus exposes the mechanisms of symbolic oppression, censorship, and self-censorship.
