Race was Elsewhere: The Politics of Whiteness in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe
According to the official state socialist ideology, racism did not exist in socialist Eastern Europe. ‘Race [was] elsewhere’ (Alamgir 2013), in the capitalist West. Socialist international cooperation included worker and student mobility exchanges (from Vietnam, Cuba, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East) and political and economic alliances and represented a strong anti-colonial solidarity. What happened to migrants from the Global South after the fall of the Wall? Are their stories included in the collective memory of Ostalgia? Were official state-socialist policies on the equality of all races congruent with the actual experiences of migrants from the Global South? What was the experience of the already present internal racialized neighbours, namely the Roma? How can we understand racialization of Roma in the broader context of the BLM movement and local ‘Roma Lives Matter’ responses? How did the project of ‘national eugenics’ impact ideas about racial hierarchies, whiteness, and ethnically coded divisions in society? Non-involvement in the colonies is used as an argument in the context of decolonization, but how did Eastern Europeans benefit from the colonial project? The politics of whiteness emerge today in the context of neo-authoritarian governments, with the heroization of national history and the notion of a victorious national body being promoted. What are the experiences of artists of colour living in the region today? Can contemporary art challenge these narratives and contribute to a more inclusive collective memory?
Session Convenors:
Denisa Tomková, Charles University in Prague
Kvet Nguyen, Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava
Speakers:
Jelena Sofronijevic
Egypt’s Mother, Dalmatia
Hundreds of refugees, fighting for their lives in the Mediterranean Sea, are fleeing from war. This is now a familiar scene. But the year is 1944, and those seeking asylum are travelling from Europe to Africa. During World War II, 30-40k Yugoslavs were evacuated from Dalmatia to former British Army camps like El Shatt, near the Suez Canal in Egypt. Under strict regulations – in these semi-labour camps – they maintained a veneer of normality by working on newspapers, churches, and, in the case of famous Split-born composer Josip Hatze, a new choral arrangement. Some couldn’t return to what became socialist Yugoslavia, and a cemetery was constructed for the 715 who died on site. It was seriously damaged in the Six-Day War, but still standing is its Mother Dalmatia statue, and the metal replica built at Drvenik Veliki in Croatia. It is a monument to the labourers, the everyday work of women, and the arts produced in exile – predating the recent interest in Yugoslav modernism and brutalism, as in New York. This paper considers this under-represented story of migration from Europe, subverting stereotypes about the SWANA region. It speaks to historic transnational solidarities, especially cultural connections between Yugoslavia and Palestine, and contemporary politics; many argue that this served as a ‘test case’ for the labour camp model now employed by the Israeli government in Gaza. The site’s deconstruction and reconstruction also speaks to contemporary struggles over historical memory through culture.Successive nationalist governments have supported, defunded, and protested the preservation of these war memorials and monuments (spomeniks). With the film, El Shatt: Nacrt za Utopiju (A Blueprint for Utopia) (2023), we explore how these pasts are creatively interpreted from the present, and the artistic labour of filling the gaps in Western/European-centric archives and accounts.
Thu Huong Phamová, Academy of Arts Architecture & Design in Prague
Coexistence of Vietnamese and Czech Communities in Intercultural Public Space: An Architectural-Artistic Case Study in Cheb
My research generally addresses the contemporary topic of migration, with a focus on the Vietnamese minority in the Czech Republic due to the significant cultural and economic differences between this minority and the majority. During the socialist era, when migration was regulated, political migration took place based on the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. As a result, tens of thousands of Vietnamese people arrived in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other Council member countries before the 1990s (Hüwelmeier 2015). Today, the Vietnamese community forms the third-largest minority in the Czech Republic (Czech Statistical Office 2021). The objective of my architectural-artistic project was to examine the potential for the creation of intercultural public space within Cheb, a town in the western part of the Czech Republic that has a high proportion of Vietnamese residents. The project was a temporary installation, entitled the Bay of the Landing Dragon, symbolizing Czech-Vietnamese relations in a space where these two communities interact on a daily basis – the area in front of the primary school. This project was based on ideas gathered from a preceding urban design workshop, where I focused on how public space is perceived by both Vietnamese and Czech residents. I sought points of intersection where these two groups might connect and understand each other. To further this goal, I engaged young school-age children and their parents in collaborative activities, thereby creating an intercultural public environment. By creating a familiar space together, I aimed to provide children with the opportunity to develop understanding and connections across cultures from an early age.
Tobey Yunjing Pan, The University of Edinburgh
Rethinking the Hypersexualised (White) Bodies of Women Artists in Late Socialist East-Central Europe
This paper examines the distinction established between the hyper-sexualisation of women’s bodies by women artists in East-Central Europe during the 1970s–80s and the sexualisation of Eastern European women post-1989. In the former period, hyper-sexualisation emerges as a neo-avant-garde strategy, where women artists use their own nude bodies in performance and photography. While these practices are often interpreted as resistance under late socialism, post-1989 sexualisation is linked to the neoliberal economy, explored in works like Warte Mal! Prostitution After the Velvet Revolution (1999) and Looking for a Husband with EU Passport (2000–05). This paper examines a post-socialist paradox that reinforces this distinction: while East-Central European intellectuals recognise the need to ‘catch up’ with the West, they remain sceptical of Western anti-capitalist ideas, viewing them as detached from the lived experiences of scarcity under socialism. This paradox reinforces nationalist conservatism, emphasising a legacy of scarcity that ironically sustains the very belatedness it seeks to overcome. Framing the white female nudes from the former East as symbols of freedom, I argue, inadvertently sustains ‘white innocence’ in East-Central Europe, aspiring to racial acceptance inaccessible to non-white participants in global capitalism. This is not only due to how female nudes from East-Central Europe echo the Western canon of whiteness, but also because presenting them as symbols of freedom against communism suppresses any critical engagement. Denying links between sexualisation in late socialism and global capitalism aligns with the Left’s ‘cultural turn’, which prioritises culture, identity, and discourse over class analysis—an approach that may ultimately revive 19th-century imperialist and racist ideas.
Ada Szmulik, University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in Warsaw, Poland
Insider’s perspective and genre paintings: objects by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas
The aim of the presentation is to determine how the Roma creators in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe use art to combat negative stereotypes about their communities, while emerging ethnic pride, using the example of the work of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (1978 – present), an artist and activist of Polish-Roma origin, who was put in charge of a national pavilion during 59th Venice Biennale. The first part of the presentation will be devoted to the problems that the Roma people have to face (including: racism, the perspective of the dominant culture, folklorization and antigypsyism). The central part of the statement will be devoted to Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, in relation to her activist work and artistic creation, with an emphasis on the characteristic selection of materials and means of expression and presenting the insider’s perspective through intimate images, in which feminist themes and the creation of herstory are particularly important. In the final part of the presentation, an attempt will be made to discuss the reception of the artist’s works in the Polish environment, using media mentions, scientific articles and works in the field of art criticism as examples.