Abstract
Hidden Constellations examines how queer sapphic spatiality in New York City is shaped through everyday negotiations rather than formal venues. While official data record only four lesbian bars, this paper argues that scarcity in data does not signify absence in lived experience. Drawing from qualitative interviews and participatory cognitive mapping, the study treats mapping as a queer design method that transforms memory, emotion, and silence into spatial knowledge. Informed by queer phenomenology, feminist and critical cartography, and data feminism, the research reframes mapping from representation to resonance. The paper shows how sapphic individuals tactically inhabit, sense, and remake urban space through affective and relational practices. By translating unrecorded experiences into spatial knowledge, this study introduces layered overlay mapping and relational comparative analysis to foreground embodiment, reflexivity, and the politics of belonging.
Keywords
queer spatiality, episodic memory, cognitive map, data scarcity
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.302
Citation
Zhang, Y. (2026) Hidden Constellations: Mapping Queer Sapphic Spatiality in New York City, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.302
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Hidden Constellations: Mapping Queer Sapphic Spatiality in New York City
Hidden Constellations examines how queer sapphic spatiality in New York City is shaped through everyday negotiations rather than formal venues. While official data record only four lesbian bars, this paper argues that scarcity in data does not signify absence in lived experience. Drawing from qualitative interviews and participatory cognitive mapping, the study treats mapping as a queer design method that transforms memory, emotion, and silence into spatial knowledge. Informed by queer phenomenology, feminist and critical cartography, and data feminism, the research reframes mapping from representation to resonance. The paper shows how sapphic individuals tactically inhabit, sense, and remake urban space through affective and relational practices. By translating unrecorded experiences into spatial knowledge, this study introduces layered overlay mapping and relational comparative analysis to foreground embodiment, reflexivity, and the politics of belonging.