This event looks at the ways in which drag has been used as a tool of HIV/AIDS activism in two distinct contexts.

In the first, Katerina Suverina examines drag performance as a form of cultural mediation in HIV-prevention work in contemporary Russia through a case study of Zaza Napoli, the stage persona of actor Vladimir Kazantsev. In the late 1990s, as the expanding HIV epidemic was officially framed primarily through injecting drug use, prevention initiatives targeting gay men remained fragmented and struggled to gain legitimacy within club environments marked by HIV-related stigma, community distrust, and limited support from management. 
 

Within this context, Zaza Napoli operated as an intermediary between HIV activists and queer nightlife publics. Through collaboration with NGOs, promotion of voluntary testing, condom distribution, and participation in touring theatrical productions addressing HIV, her performances embedded prevention messaging within entertainment spaces. Humor, parody, and embodied visibility transformed “scary HIV-prevention” into affectively resonant forms capable of circulating within communities resistant to formal public health intervention. Drawing on interviews, archival materials, and media sources, she will show how drag performance functioned as an informal infrastructure of prevention, extending the reach of limited activist initiatives.

In the second, George Severs looks at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of self-described “gay male nuns”. The Sisters are a global network of radical queer activists, but their engagement with HIV/AIDS was particularly inventive. Having placed them within a broader history of religious drag, Severs will reconstruct their practices of saint making, canonising living people as a tool of celebration amidst a context in which homophobia and HIV/AIDS vilified and marginalized queer and HIV positive people. 

About the speakers

• Katerina Suverina (PhD) is a research associate at the Zukunftskolleg and The Department of History and Sociology, University of Konstanz. She is also a co-founder of The February Journal. In her research, teaching, and museum work, she is concerned with critical theory, queer studies, medical humanities, and gender studies. Her current project focuses on history of HIV/AIDS and HIV-activism in the late USSR and contemporary Russia.
• George Severs is a postdoctoral researcher in the Gender Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute. There, he works on the SNF-funded project Race and Ethnicity: Sexual Health and Reproductive Experiences (RE:SHaRE project) led by Professor Caroline Rusterholz. George is the author of Radical Acts: HIV/AIDS Activism in Late Twentieth-Century England (Bloomsbury, 2024) and several articles on the history of HIV/AIDS, sexual violence, queer history and oral history.

This event is organised by the Gender Centre.

Image: "Zaza Napoli takes a rapid HIV test" © LaSky NGO.