By Raluca Pop
Raluca Pop reviews Caterina Preda and Magdalena Radomska’s Plural and Multiple Geographies of Modern and Contemporary Art in East-Central Europe (Routledge, 2024, 272p.)
Defining contemporary art in East-Central Europe is not an easy task. In this sense, Plural and Multiple Geographies of Modern and Contemporary Art in East-Central Europe attempts to address this challenge: it proposes a shift in the mapping and placement of art in East-Central Europe by acknowledging the multiplicity of geographies that characterize this region and continue to evolve. The editors of the volume thought of it as a “shift from the tendency to narrativize the map and name its elements, toward mapping understood as the practice of occupying the place” (2). Caterina Preda is a researcher and Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science of the University of Bucharest, specializing in art and politics in modern dictatorships, especially in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Magdalena Radomska is a post-Marxist art historian and historian of philosophy with a PhD in art history, also an Assistant Professor at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland.
Where exactly does East-Central Europe end and Western Europe start? Or when did Post-Communist Europe end and a more ‘contemporary’ Post-Communist Europe begin? Such questions have received close attention in recent years, also in the history of art. As expected, a consensus is far from being reached. In this context, the editors’ option is to refer to this area mainly as East-Central Europe (ECE). The authors acknowledge the term ECE as somewhat limiting. Romanian critic Cristian Nae points out that the fabrication of identities such as“post-communist” or “Eastern European” can lead to a capitalist trap in which they are commodified as customized products. While that is true, the authors argue that this terminology can be used to reveal a class geography made up of these identity constructs and to trace the underlying class divisions.
Starting from, but not at all limited to Piotr Piotrowski’s “horizontal art history”, the authors aim to view the art geography and history of this complex region from a fresh perspective. The concepts of “multiple” and “plural” geographies constitute the book’s core. Geographical references always have a deeper meaning:
“seemingly neutral terms (…) that are designed to hide the fact that the relations between areas of the world are based on class division” (24).
As Magdalena Radomska argues in her chapter, the “plural” geography is used as a demand for equality and solidarity. To build the claim, she brings as examples artists from East-Central Europe, such as The World and the Debt by Mona Vătămău and Florin Tudor (2016), The history of the relationship between art and capital (2006) by Igor Grubić, and the Grassroots Mapping group’s projects. By using them, she shows that
“plural geographies are not theories that can be applied to works – rather, they are perspectives that are contained within them” (34).
The volume is divided into four parts. The first one deals with the term “plural geographies”. It refers to interpreting geography as a “critical social practice,” aiming to break free of traditional geography that maintains inequality-inducing narratives. The second part discusses the “multiple geographies” concept, built on Eisenstadt’s “multiple modernities,” and the importance of examining the region’s geographies from the perspective of local conditions. After the conceptual parts, the third part of the volume responds to the Polish art historian Piotr Piotrowski’s last book, A Global Approach to the Art of Eastern Europe. Published posthumously, this book calls for the unity of peripheries around the world, pointing out the need for „an alter globalist art history” that should create solidarity among different regions without subordinating them to the Western canonical model.
The essays in the third part respond to this by proposing a pluralistic, more decentralized way of mapping the artistic geography. In her essay, for example, Katarzyna Cytlak “reexamines the self-identification of Polish artists of the 1980s with Africa as an attempt to self-globalize their artistic work outside of the artistic framework offered by the East-West divides.” (151). The example brought is Luxus group, founded in 1983, and their project Vodoo Africa. This was exhibited alongside the African artist El Hadji Sy’s 2016 exhibition At first, I thought I was dancing, to create a bridge between African culture and the Polish context. Cytlak presents how, in the context of socialism, the image of Africa was distorted and used to “promoting the brotherhood of workers of all continents and races” (156). For Polish people, the mythical land of Africa became a refuge from the need to identify with either the USSR or the Capitalist West. These comparisons and relations between two distant cultures made the break from the Cold War divides possible, but the problem of political correctness is not ignored. Cytlak simply states that while in today’s context of cultural debates the Polish artists’ project that stereotyped the African culture would be seen as unacceptable, this operation, as radical as it was, created a tension that made it possible to engage with the dominant art history narratives, to question them and to make visible the alter-canonical connections with other marginalized places. This also puts into perspective East-Central Europe’s position in contemporary global art narratives.
The last part centres on Gayatri Spivak’s concept of “strategic essentialism,” in which the contributors examine how marginalized and oppressed groups unite through artistic projects and spaces. For instance, Karolina Majewska-Gude talks about Ewa Partum’s performance Pearls (2006). The work represents mostly illegal migrant workers from peripheral countries like Poland, Ecuador or Brazil and provides “a scene in which migrants could not only become visible members of the transnational community but also articulate their own marginal position within that community.” (193). Another interesting addition is made by Pavlína Morganová, who presents a case study on the places where artists from ECE could organize exhibitions for their works. A map consisting of private living rooms, basements, and lobbies of cultural centres that showcase the solidarity of marginalized artists from ECE is made visible, alongside their systemic oppression during the communist regimes. What appears to be a choice is an illusion when an artist can either refuse a small, potentially inadequate venue or accept it as the only available space, because access to all others is denied.
By incorporating multiple artistic waves and works, curatorial experiences, revolutionary art meetings and their consequences, and, more importantly, the subtle but meaningful correspondences made within the East European space and also between other similar and distant regions, the book’s strongest point is the integration of these elements. Additionally, by applying that critical, and sometimes cynical, eye to existing theories and perceptions, the authors reveal well-hidden hierarchical and hegemonic mechanisms of suppression. As Lina Džuverović states, while talking about the rise in popularity and interest in “socialist monuments” and the “hegemonic gaze” that governs over these simplified and stereotyped remnants of a past:
“At the point of reception rarely are such images approached as “texts” for deeper analysis, instead functioning as a “redux,” boiling down to the shorthand for the grand narrative with the endlessly repeated refrain: images of dead political systems. Making it difficult to circumvent such knee-jerk responses, the artist or curator is interpellated as a regional subject, included and welcomed as long as the work can be read as a relic of past times and from far away strange lands.” (101).
However, the volume’s limitations lie in the plural and multiple framework that invites and accepts as many methodologies as possible, leading to theoretical over-saturation. Whilst the deeply conceptual, political and critical approach might seem articulated, the density of specialized terminology from so many different theoretical directions comes close to engulfing the text’s overall meaning. Thus, familiarity with the debates around this topic is extremely useful before engaging with this reading.
Overall, this volume offers a wide range of theories and perspectives from within a region that has been viewed from the outside for too long. It does exactly what it set out to do: present multiple, plural, and interchangeable juxtaposed geographies that do not reject one another. This project aligns perfectly with the efforts underway to decolonize and pluralize art-historical narratives. Combining an array of critiques addressed to institutions in power, art history, cultural and political studies and geographical thinking, Plural and Multiple Geographies of Modern and Contemporary Art in East-Central Europe is an instrumental book for enriching scholars’ research and perspectives, but not so much for a simple introduction to any of these subjects.
Raluca Pop is an Assistant Editor in the Democracy and Culture Section. She is third-year student at the Faculty of Letters in Cluj-Napoca, in the Department of Universal and Comparative Literature. Her research interests include Balkan studies, spatial studies, as well as memory and trauma studies. She is currently writing her Bachelor’s thesis on these topics.
