Igor Zeiger

Igor Zeiger is a queer artist, photographer, and curator whose work centers the vulnerability, resilience, and desire of LGBTQ+ communities, with a particular focus on gay and queer male experience in West Asia and Europe.

Artistic practice
Born in Uzbekistan and based between Israel and Europe, Igor works at the intersection of visual storytelling and research in the history of queer art, treating the camera as both an archival and activist tool. His photographic series often follow individuals and communities over many years, transforming intimate collaboration into visual testimony against erasure.

Queer projects
Igor’s ongoing project Heaven Can Wait traces the life of Karam Dadu, a queer Arab man whose coming out as a teenager led to exile from his family, migration, and the reinvention of self through drag performance and chosen family. The work moves between street, shelter, kitchen, and stage, insisting on the complexity of a gay Arab subject who refuses victimhood and claims glamour, agency, and joy.

Curatorial and research work
Alongside his photographic practice, Igor researches queer visual culture and the institutional histories that have shaped what is seen—and not seen—in museums and archives. He actively engages LGBTQ+ archives and heritage organizations internationally, seeking to connect personal narratives like Karam’s to broader, transnational histories of queer resistance.
​
Positioning
As a gay man and visual researcher, Igor understands “fluid femininity” as a space where masculinity, camp, and femme embodiment collide, especially in gay and drag cultures. His work invites viewers to stand with those who cross borders of gender, nation, and respectability, and to recognize queer and gay lives as sites of beauty, knowledge, and political urgency.