Not yet written stories - women artists in Central and Eastern Europe

The conference Not Yet Written Stories. Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe

2-3 of September 2021

Conference organising committee:

Barbara Borčić, Sandra Križić Roban, Marika Kuźmicz Lana Lovrenčić, Andra Silapētere

Organisers: Arton Foundation, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art- LCCA Riga, Center for Contemporary Arts - SCCA-Ljubljana & Office for Photography, Zagreb

Official language of the conference: ENG, the conference will be translated to Polish

We would like to invite you to take part in the conference Not Yet Written. Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe, which will be held on 2-3 September as an online event (on the Zoom platform). The conference is organised by the Arton Foundation (Warsaw), the Latvian Center for Contemporary Arts (Riga), SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts, (Ljubljana) and the Office for Photography (Zagreb).

The scholarly sin of omission, and the exclusion of works by women from the canon of art history have resulted in the erasure of the achievements of numerous women artists. Such "amnesia" in history writing processes has been widespread and has been happening regardless of the socio-political situation. However, women artists as well as art historians, critics, curators and gallerists in culturally and economically "peripheral" countries, such as those behind the Iron Curtain, and in the former Yugoslavia, have been at risk of double exclusion on the grounds of both geography and gender. In parallel to the development of new states and socialist societies after WW2, women built themselves up not only politically and culturally, but also artistically. Nevertheless, instead of the anticipated advancement of women in various fields, society and its power structures continued to support the traditionally predominant patriarchal view. To counteract that situation, the Arton Foundation (Warsaw), the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts (Riga), SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts (Ljubljana), and the Office for Photography (Zagreb) in 2019 collectively launched the project Stories Not Yet Written: Women Artists' Archives On-line. It focuses on women artists from Poland, Latvia, Croatia and Slovenia in order to raise awareness of recent historical events in Central and Eastern Europe and consequently stimulate new readings of history. The project not only maps regional contexts and collaborations, but also aims to reconsider common points of history-writing processes while investigating gender in a social, political, cultural, and artistic context within Central and Eastern Europe. Taking this project as the starting point, the partners are now organising the conference Stories Not Yet Written. Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe.

The two-day conference will comprise seven panels devoted to issues such as the work of women artists in the field of both new media and textiles, for example, women's artistic education, socially and politically engaged art, and many others.

The conference will be inaugurated by a lecture by Professor Leonida Kovač entitled Subversion of the normative heterosexuality in the self-representational works of Nasta Rojc.

The accompanying events will include the screening of Sonja Savić's films and a performance by Ana Čigon entitled Dear Ladies, Thank you (2011-2013)

The project is part of the Creative Europe program.

Co-financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport

If you have any questions, please contact Dr Marika Kuźmicz [email protected]

Konferencja Historie jeszcze nienapisane, Artystki Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej

2-3 września 2021

Komitet organizacyjny konferencji:

Barbara Borčić, Sandra Križić Roban, Marika Kuźmicz Lana Lovrenčić, Andra Silapētere

Organizatorzy: Fundacja Arton, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art- LCCA Ryga, Center for Contemporary Arts - SCCA-Lublana oraz Office for Photography, Zagrzeb

Konferencja odbywa się w j. angielskim, jest tłumaczona na j. polski

Serdecznie zapraszamy do uczestnictwa w konferencji Historie jeszcze nienapisane. Artystki w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej, która odbędzie się w dniach 2-3 września 2021 jako wydarzenie w trybie zdalnym (platforma zoom). Organizatorami konferencji są Fundacja Arton (Warszawa), Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts (Ryga), SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts (Lublana), Office for Photography (Zagrzeb).

Wykluczenie twórczości kobiet z kanonu historii sztuki doprowadziło do wymazania dorobku wielu artystek. Tego rodzaju zaniedbanie występowało powszechne, niezależnie od sytuacji społeczno-politycznej. Jednak artystki, historyczki sztuki, krytyczki, kuratorki czy galerzystki w kulturowo i gospodarczo "peryferyjnych" krajach, takich jak państwa za dawną żelazną kurtyną czy w byłej Jugosławii, były zagrożone podwójnym wykluczeniem - zarówno ze względu na położenie geograficzne, jak i płeć. Wraz z rozwojem nowych państw i społeczeństw socjalistycznych po II wojnie światowej kobiety umacniały swoją pozycję nie tylko politycznie i kulturowo, ale także artystycznie. Jednak na przeszkodzie ich prognozowanemu awansowi w różnych dziedzinach stał tradycyjnie dominujący pogląd patriarchalny, wspierany przez społeczne struktury władzy. Aby zmienić ten stan rzeczy, Fundacja Arton (Warszawa), Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts (Ryga), SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts (Lublana) oraz Office for Photography (Zagrzeb) w 2019 roku wspólnie zainaugurowały projekt pt. Not Yet Written Stories: Women Artists' Archives On-line / Historie jeszcze nienapisane. Archiwa artystek online, który skupia się na artystkach z Polski, Łotwy, Chorwacji i Słowenii w celu zwiększenia świadomości na temat ich twórczości, postaw, biografii Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej, a tym samym stymulowania nowych odczytań historii. Projekt nie tylko mapuje regionalne konteksty i sieci współpracy, ale także skłania do ponownego przyjrzenia się wspólnym punktom w procesie pisania historii, rozpatrując płeć w społecznym, politycznym, kulturowym i artystycznym kontekście środkowoeuropejskim. Konferencji pt. Not Yet Written Stories. Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe / Historie jeszcze nienapisane. Artystki w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej.jest częścią tego wieloletniego projektu.

Konferencja zostanie zainaugurowana wykładem prof. Leonidy Kovač pt. Subwersja normatywnej heteroseksualności w autoreprezentacyjnych pracach Nasty Rojc

Wydarzeniami towarzyszącymi konfenrecji jest projekcja filmów Sonji Savić's oraz performans Ana Čigon pt. Dear Ladies, Thank you (2011-2013) z wprowadzeniem artystki

Conference programme:

02.09.2021

9.00 - 10.00 AM

Lecture by Leonida Kovač Subversion of normative heterosexuality in the self-representational works of Nasta Rojc.

Leonida Kovač, PhD is an art historian and theorist, curator and the full professor at the University of Zagreb, Academy of Fine Arts. She is concerned with contemporary art, feminist theories and critical theories. She has curated several retrospective exhibitions of women artists, to mention here Dorothy Cross, Rita Duffy, Katarzyna Kozyra, Orshi Drozdik, Nan Hoover, Duba Sambolec, Edita Schubert, Nasta Rojc. She published nine books among which are Anonimalia: Normative Discourses and Self-representation of 20 th Century Women Artists (2010); Tübingen's Box: Essays on Visual Culture and Biopolitics (2013); In the Mirror of the Cultural Screen: Jagoda Kaloper (2013); Mrđan Bajić: Disenacting Transversals (2016) and numerous academic articles. She was curator of the Croatian Pavilion at Sao Paulo Biennale in 2002, and at Venice Biennale in 2003. From 2002 to 2005 she was the elected Vice-president of the International Association of Art Critics - AICA. She has organized and co-organized several international academic conferences, the most recent is Memory, Word and Image: W. G. Sebald's Artistic Legacy (University of Amsterdam, 2019).

Panel #1

10.00 - 11.30 AM

moderator: Marika Kuźmicz

Urška Savič Reflections on the Archive as a Strategy for Re-writing Histories

Karolina Majewska-GüdeTelling Stories about Feminist Art in Socialist Europe, or an Archive as a Place of Cross-Generational Re-doing

Tia Čiček Examining women's roles at the ŠKUC Gallery in the 1980s

Wanda Janakiewicz Urszula Czartoryska as theoretician and founder of the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art in Łódź

Panel #2

12.00 - 13.30 PM

moderator: Andra Ailapētere

Tatiana Bogacheva Social Reproduction in the Eastern European Art

Anne Pfautsch The Archive of Sibylle Bergemann: Questions of Memorialisation and Reinterpretation

Miha Colner Triple exclusion and fierce determination: Case Studies of Dragica Čadež & Duba Sambolec

Panel #3

14.30 - 16.30 PM

moderator: Barbara Borčić

Kateryna Iakovlenko Art Between Manhood and Activism: Role of Ukrainian Women Artists During Political Transformations

Adele Bea Cipste and Ieva Melgalve Ways of Forgetting: The Faded Image of Women Artists in Periodicals of the Latvian SSR

Magdalena Worłowska Spiritual and Rational Witches - Ecological Art of Female Artists in The Polish People's Republic

18.00 PM

Performance Dear Ladies, Thank you (2011-2013) by Ana Čigon

Ana Čigon (b. 1982) is an artist from Slovenia who mainly works in video, film, animation and performance. Having received a BA in Painting and an MA in Video from the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design, she was awarded an MA in Interface Cultures by the University of Art and Design Linz (Kunstuniversität Linz) in Austria. Her documentary films mostly deal with feminist and social issues. She is also a video artist for theatre and an active contemporary visual artist who has shown her works at individual and collective exhibitions in Slovenia and internationally, receiving awards and nominations for her video works and films.

Day 2

03.09.2021

Panel #1

9.00 - 10.30 AM

moderator: Barbara Borčić

Slađana Petrović Varagić Archiving female performance in Yugoslavia - Dragana (Jovanović) Žarevac

Iliyana Nedkova Why Have There Been No Great Contemporary Bulgarian Women Artists?

Kateřina Štroblová There Is Nothing Like Women's Art. Work, Positions and Emancipation of Female Artists in Czechoslovakia during the Normalisation Period

Panel #2

11.00 AM - 13.00 PM

moderator: Marika Kuźmicz

Ivor Glavaš The figure of the woman author: Tatjana Ivančić

Łukasz Mojsak Sonja Savić. A Hidden Antecedent

Panel #3

14.00 - 15.30 PM

moderator: Andra Ailapētere

Kata Balázs Little material, lot of thought Margit Szilvitzky and experimental textile / fibre art

Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni Unraveling the Fibre Art of Geta Brătescu

Johana Lomová Exclusion through specialisation Membership of Women Artists in the Czechoslovak Artists´ Union in the 1950´s and 1960´s and its consequences for writing art history

Eda Tuulberg The Abdomen is Over-Etched

Panel #4

16.00 - 17.30 PM

moderator: Lana Lovrencić

Uschi Klein Picturing the female gaze: photography as a form of cultural resistance during Romania's communist era

Maria Anna Rogucka Alina Ślesińska's Self-awareness? Why and What Kind of Artist's Image Creation through Photographs in Mass Printed Media?

Tihana Rubić & Ana Šeparović The Construction of Gender in Interwar Photography: An Interdisciplinary View

Šelda Puķīte & Indrek Grigor Silver girls: Retouched history of photography

19.00 PM

Screening of the films by Sonja Savić:

Play, 1997, 22'

Superreal (Superstvarnost), 1997, 57'

Sonja Savić b. 1961 in Čačak, Serbia. Following her debut in 1977, Savić became a star actress of 1980s post-Yugoslav mainstream cinema. In the 1990s, she focussed on independent work in theatre and visual arts, as the founder of an alternative theatre group and a video artist. Her little-known video productions engage with the Ex-Yugoslav counter cultural and artistic scene, as well as the troubled history of the Balkans in the 1990s. Based on the manipulation of found footage and staged acting scenes, these pieces feature a dynamic, trancy collage aesthetic that interweaves and loops motifs and imagery. Savić died in 2008 in Belgrade. Her estate is in the custody of the Nadežda Petrović gallery in Čačak.

Courtesy Nadežda Petrović Gallery, Čačak, Serbia