Re-drawing the Art Map of “New Europe”
Notwithstanding the long asserted crisis of the legitimacy of metanarratives, the “battle” of the narratives for Europe is still being fought on all fronts.”
Since 1989, art exhibitions have been at the forefront of the battle for new European narratives, and narratives about the art of Europe’s former East have been proliferating. In this essay, Svetla Kazalarska discusses the curatorial strategies in exhibitions of modern and cotemporary visual art from Central and Eastern Europe, and identifies the different narratives that have recently been brought into play. She argues that these exhibitions may be examined as powerful tools for re-mapping the art geography of the ‘New Europe’.
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About the Author
Svetla Kazalarska has been recently awarded a Ph.D. degree (2011) in Cultural Anthropology by the “St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia. Her dissertation explores the difficult relationships between history and memory at the newly established museums of communism in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. Her research interests are spread across several fields: post-communist memory and historiography, urban anthropology of the post-communist cities, visual studies and contemporary art histories.
