Uncontainable : Queer Bodies & The Right To Be Seen
To be seen is not merely to be visible. It is to be recognised, legible, and valued within a social order. In contemporary society, recognition is increasingly mediated through the body. The way we dress, move, speak, and appear — our aesthetic presentation — functions as a powerful register of legitimacy.
But the right to be seen has never been distributed equally. Some bodies move through the world with assumed belonging, afforded recognition without question. Others are rendered invisible, their lives overlooked or ignored, and their identities erased from public and institutional recognition.
To be queer or trans is to live in the tension between invisibility and hypervisibility, striving to assert one’s identity and claim belonging in spaces that may refuse recognition. When beauty and normative appearance are tied to belonging, those who fall outside the prescribed standards are not merely marginalised; they are rendered disposable.
This workshop provides a space for participants to examine the politics of visibility. Together, we will explore how aesthetic norms shape everyday survival, and how queer and trans communities resist and redefine recognition on their own terms.