This symposium aimed to examine how the relationships between forms of overseas colonial power and domination have affected the dynamics around the Baltic Sea, and the relative positions of various ethnic groups, including minorities and indigenous peoples, as well as the influence of such forms of administration and control on approaching the environment. What kind… Continue reading Symposium Power Relations and Historical Turning Points in the Baltic Sea Region
News
CFP: Westsplaining in Art History (online workshop, 28 Jun 24)
The term ‘westsplaining’ became popularized amongst political theorists in Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and was used critically to denote the ‘phenomenon of people from the Anglosphere loudly foisting their analytical schema and political prescriptions onto the [Eastern European] region’ (Smoleński and Dutkiewicz). As such,… Continue reading CFP: Westsplaining in Art History (online workshop, 28 Jun 24)
Rendering Race Through a Paranoid Postsocialist Lens
This chapter written with Redi Koobak engages with the heated public debate on racial representation and colonial history that arose around Kumu Art Museum’s exhibition Rendering Race (2021) curated by Bart Pushaw. As an academic activist intervention, it proposed an important shift by changing racist titles of artworks from the twentieth century and thereby for… Continue reading Rendering Race Through a Paranoid Postsocialist Lens
The Return of Suppressed Memories in Eastern Europe
The Memory Studies Special Issue “The Return of Suppressed Memories in Eastern Europe: Locality and Unsilencing Difficult Histories” (15:3, 2022) includes peer-reviewed articles by Roma Sendyka, Violeta Davoliūtė, Margaret Tali, Asja Mandić, Mischa Twitchin and Shelley Hornstein. The issue grew out of the symposium “Prisms of Silence” at the Estonian Academy of Art in February 2021.… Continue reading The Return of Suppressed Memories in Eastern Europe
From Unwanted Heritage Towards Difficult Heritage
This article published in the RIHA journal analyses the trajectory, debates around and consequent uses of Arno Breker’s portrait busts of Peter and Irene Ludwig (1984) in Germany and Hungary. In my analysis I bring to the fore an important shift in curators attitudes in framing this work in the 2020s in the course of… Continue reading From Unwanted Heritage Towards Difficult Heritage
The Spots of Der Leopard: Latvia’s Colonial History Portrayed in Art
This article reprinted in Deep Baltic reflects on Latvia’s complex colonial history and the slow processes of its revision by focusing on the public-space performance by Quinsy and Jörgen Gario “How to count the spots of Der Leopard” in Kuldīga. They realized the performance by the monument to the Baltic-German duke Jakob Kettler in August… Continue reading The Spots of Der Leopard: Latvia’s Colonial History Portrayed in Art
Arts, Crafts, Affects
On 25-26 November 2022 we organised a public seminar “Arts, Crafts, Affects: Documenting HerStories and Worldbuilding” with Ulrike Gerhardt in the Estonian Academy of Arts to consider. It featured Mare Tralla, Ulrike Mayer, Rufina Bazlova and Sofia Tocar (Framed in Belarus) as presenters and Katrin Kivimaa as discussant. The seminar was followed by a guided… Continue reading Arts, Crafts, Affects
Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds in Vilnius
With the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the past has returned in Eastern Europe, changing from something distant into a present-day disaster for millions of people. The invasion that started in 2014 with Crimea, Luhansk and Donbass was often dismissed by the international community, but it has now grown into a situation that is… Continue reading Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds in Vilnius
Article at MoMA Post
In this article written with Ieva Astahovska for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Post platform we review the ongoing research and exchange project “Communicating Difficult Pasts” (2019-22), its different activities, its creative and curatorial methods used. In the project we approach Baltic history as global and closely entangled with its adjacent regions. We propose… Continue reading Article at MoMA Post
Exhibition “Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds” Riga
The exhibition “Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds” includes works by Aslan Ġoisum, Jaana Kokko, Quinsy Gario, Lia Dostlieva, Andrii Dostliev, Paulina Pukytė, Ülo Pikkov, Vika Eksta, Zuzanna Hertzberg. The stories of this exhibition bring together the difficult and often-silenced aspects of pasts including violent conflicts, painful losses and their long-term legacies. The difficult pasts addressed here… Continue reading Exhibition “Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds” Riga