Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva: What Happens After – Art, AIDS, and Lesbian Histories (2025)

Video (54:16): Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva presents her book project ‘What Happens After, Art, AIDS and Lesbian Histories’. Video by School of Visual Arts 2025.

Book Project

Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva explains, ‘Today’s talk is really the scaffolding for my book project, What Happens After, Art, AIDS and Lesbian Histories, which is the first art-historical study to focus on art and lesbian identity during the initial two decades of the AIDS crisis in the United States. I’m currently completing the manuscript, hoping for spring 2026.

The book examines the social conditions and creative concerns of lesbian-identified artists in a time of collective queer suffering, a time that was marked by mass death, blatant homophobia, and a neglectful government that allowed for the epidemic to escalate. The chapters are structured thematically, and contextualize works by lesbian-identified artists within a larger art historical framework and sociopolitical landscape. And many of the artworks that I discuss in the book have yet to receive serious scholarly attention. The book uncovers narratives that have been neglected in art historical discourse so far, and thereby enriches not only the growing archive of queer art history, but also offers a more multifaceted understanding of American art during the ’80s and the ’90s. But in this talk, I want to focus on the why of this book project. What prompted me to write this book? Why the AIDS crisis? Why lesbians? Why artists? And why me?’

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