Introduction

Gay45 was the first gay magazine in Romania, published in 1993, in two issues, under the coordination of Răzvan Ion. The magazine offered editorials, interviews, articles, international news, and personal accounts.

Through queer magazines, media reports, and art works, this exhibition reveals the understanding of homosexuality and the treatment of sexual minorities in Romania that commonly shared two different political goals at two different periods: the establishment of a new communist society starting in the mid-1940s and the transition towards a democratic society in the nineties.

As such, the exhibition offers insights into the history of the social and cultural forms of understanding nonheteronormative identity in Romania, as being shaped by two political projects: the furthering of the communist revolution and the democratization of this society.

INKLUSIV magazine is part of the history of the local lgbt media, published more than 10 years after the appearance of "Gay 45", the first queer magazine in Romania.

In Central and Southeastern Europe, rising populist governments have repeatedly reinforced the idea that LGBTQAI+ movements are 'foreign imports' to the region and depict it to be a threat to the political, social and cultural traditions of each respective countries. This exhibition seeks to consciously inform and oppose the view that nonheteronormative sexuality appeared after the fall of Communism in 1989 in Romania. The formulation of an exclusive national, religious, and heterosexual majority has legitimized itself to such an extent that nonconforming bodies have increasingly seen their rights curtailed. This type of justification has roots in the communist formulation of identity, which excluded all 'alien' bodies from the citizenry. Nevertheless, the LGBTQAI+ community managed both in times of repressive Communism and chaotic decade of the 1990s, when Romania still criminalized homosexuality, to carve a space for themselves and to foster the root of a queer identity.

This exhibit seeks to move away from the trend to dehistoricize homosexuality in Central and Eastern Europe. This latter issue in the field has led to the potrayal of queer experience in the region as homogenous, largely homophobic, and in need of transition and 'catching up' since 1989.