ARTMargins Online

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Category: ARTMargins Online: Articles

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Aida Bičakčić, Tihomir Topuzovski, Žana Vukičević, María José Lemaitre Mujica ·

Roundtable on Solidarity Art Collections: History, Theory, Practice (Aida Bičakčić, ed.)

This ARTMargins Online roundtable is based on the roundtable on solidarity art collections held in September 2025 within the framework of the Working Group Cultures of World Socialism. It provided an opportunity to introduce art collections formed through solidarity donations that laid the foundations at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Skopje, the Art Gallery in Banja Luka (today the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republika Srpska), the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, and the Ars Aevi Collection (Museum of Contemporary Art Ars Aevi) in Sarajevo.

The term “solidarity art collection” refers to art collections created in … Read more

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 by Raluca Oancea ·

The Venice Biennial: On Black Seas, Dead Waters, and Ghostly Archives

Art projects built on shock and sexuality, such as those presented by Austria or Denmark, have generated extraordinary buzz in the coverage of the 61st Venice Biennial. These projects do not, in my view, fully engage with what Koyo Kouoh, the late Cameroonian curator trained in Switzerland and known for her decolonial approach, defines as the “minor key.” Rather, a posthumanist perspective that rethinks human and nonhuman relations beyond anthropocentric and Eurocentric frameworks lies closest to Kouoh’s curatorial program, which was informed by references to writers Édouard Glissant and Toni Morrison and structured around metaphors such as “the archipelago,” “the … Read more

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 by Karolina Majewska-Güde ·

From Evidence to Experience: Revisiting the Documentation of Zbigniew Warpechowski’s and Raša Todosijević’s Performances with Fish

In the mid-1970s, Polish artist Zbigniew Warpechowski (b. 1938) and Serbian artist Raša Todosijević (1945–2024)—independently created works that, according to the photographic documentation, are strikingly similar. Warpechowski and Todosijević were artistic contemporaries within the East-Central European performance and conceptual art network, but they had no documented long-term close personal or collaborative partnership. Their respective works—Dialogue with Fish (1973) by Warpechowski and Drinking Water: Inversion, Imitation, and Contrast (1974) by Todosijević—were produced in close temporal proximity, within a comparable socio-political context of late state socialism. The two artists ultimately pursued divergent scenarios, though their works were documented in an analogous … Read more

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 by Andi Soós ·

Lunar Landing: Cosmic Themes and Feminism in the Works of Ester Krumbachová, Olja Ivanjicki, Kiki Kogelnik, and Evelyne Axell

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The first artificial satellite remained in orbit for only three months, yet its brief trajectory set in motion nearly two decades of technological and ideological rivalry between the USSR and the United States. The 1960s saw this competition intensify, culminating in NASA’s Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 20, 1969. Television broadcasts, illustrated magazines, newspapers, and science fiction films circulated images of rockets, astronauts, and cosmic landscapes, creating a shared visual language that crossed geopolitical boundaries and appeared in both art and experimental costume design

… Read more
Andrzej Wróblewski, Waiting Room I, The Queue Continues, 1956, oil, canvas; 140 × 200 cm, National Museum, Warsaw ⓒ Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation / www.andrzejwroblewski.pl

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 by Magdalena Anna Nowak ·

Suspension in Time: Transatlantic Explorations of “Waiting”

Two paintings with the same title. Both executed in the second half of the 1950s, but on the opposite sides of the Atlantic and within two different ideological systems. They are visually akin—not through overt mimicry, but by a repetition of forms and an atmosphere of claustrophobia. Can a chance juxtaposition of Andrzej Wróblewski’s Waiting Room I, The Queue Continues (Poczekalnia I, Kolejka trwa, 1956) and George Tooker’s Waiting Room (1959) disclose something important or inspiring?

Wróblewski’s painting is one of the most famous works of postwar Polish art and belongs to the collection of the National … Read more

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 by Tatjana Rosić ·

Chronicles of Repression, Chronicles of Resistance: Arts and Culture at the Forefront of State Capture in Serbia

Just four months after the ceremonial reopening of the Novi Sad railway station, the station’s canopy collapsed, killing sixteen people. The Serbian government flatly denied that any construction work had been done at all, much less that the renovations were responsible for the canopy disaster. With no one to take responsibility, the Novi Sad tragedy became a symbol for Serbian citizens not only of the horrific deaths of their fellow citizens but also of long-standing systemic violence and corruption carried out by Aleksandar Vučić’s regime.

Soon after, members of Vučić’s ruling party attacked students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Pavlína Morganová ·

Global and Forgotten Connections: The Circulation of Visual Arts Between Socialist European Countries and Asia, Latin America, and Africa during the Cold War”: International Conference at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, February 5–6, 2026

 Focused on the global relationships between the states of the former Eastern Bloc and the so-called Third World during the Cold War, the conference Global and Forgotten Connections: the Circulation of Visual Arts Between Socialist European Countries and Asia, Latin America, and Africa during the Cold War accompanied the exhibition What Are Our Collective Dreams? Global Connections—Abandoned Friendships at Zachęta National Gallery of Art (October 17, 2025 – February 8, 2026) and was prepared by curators Taras Gembik, Joanna Kordjak, and Antonina Stebur. It was a research-driven curatorial project questioning artistic, institutional, and ideological exchanges that connected Poland—particularly through the … Read more

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 by Asel Rashidova, Marat Raiymkulov ·

Resilience in Collectivity: Remembering Chyngyz Aidarov (1984-2025)

On December 16, 2025, the Kyrgyz artist Chyngyz Aidarov passed away as a result of his second stroke. This article was written by his friends and fellow members of Zamanbap Art collective (Bishkek) in an attempt to piece together his biography. Tracing his path in close connection with the contemporary art scene in Bishkek – the environment in which Chyngyz was formed and which he, in turn, actively shaped – the text offers an overview of his life and practice and lays the foundation for broader, collective understanding of his legacy.

Osh Bazaar—Childhood

Chyngyz’s house is not far from Bishkek’s … Read more

A large crowd of young people is gathered in and around two open cars in a small-town car park, talking, laughing and smoking. One boy sits on a car roof in a Dortmund football shirt, and the pair seen in Figure 6 are present in matching Nike trainers.

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Nina Follows ·

Living Together, from Berlin to Bitterfeld: GDR and Small-Town Ambivalence and Hope in the Photography of Ute and Werner Mahler

Since the 1970s, Ute Mahler has chronicled the times and lives that have surrounded her, from the late GDR to today’s Germany. Born Ute Schirmer in Berka, rural Thuringia, on October 29, 1949, just weeks after the foundation of the socialist state, she effectively grew up alongside her native East Germany. Between 1969 and 1974 she trained in photography at Leipzig’s Academy of Visual Arts (HGB, the only photography school in East Germany) under Arno Fischer (1927–2011) and formed a professional and romantic partnership with fellow photographer Werner Mahler (b.1950), whom she married shortly afterwards. She has since worked as … Read more

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 by Anna Zett ·

Dispose, discard, discare: Environmental, political and emotional wastelands in the German Democratic Republic

In everyday use, waste refers to a material which is considered dirty, useless, or worthless, and therefore deserves to be dumped, ditched or disappeared. If these words are uncomfortable to read, it’s probably because they are frequently used as a metaphor in the social and political sphere. In English, there are numerous synonyms for trash and our separation from it. We might speak politely of disposal, but the underlying problem remains the same: how to get rid of dirty junk for good? Some crap can be directly composted or recycled, but that applies only to very specific materials in very … Read more

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 by Marie Meyerding ·

Christa Jeitner’s Visions of Trees

My first encounter with Christa Jeitner’s work Zakopane Tree (Zakopanischer Baum) was a black and white photograph of an outdoor scene in nature. It shows a hanging textile work in the center. Attached to almost leafless branches, the triangular fabric body hangs in the air while its ends rest on a field floor of stones and grass. Apart from a few tall, vaguely recognizable trees in the background, the upper part of the photograph is almost white, so that the dark branches and the light-colored fabric stand out strongly. Dated to 1979-80, this work was created by Jeitner … Read more

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 by Karolina Kolenda ·

Earth, Matter, Rhythm: Władysław Hasior and the Socialist Anthropocene

Recent years have brought significant developments in the research on the neo-avant-garde beginnings of environmental art in Poland.(Among them is an upcoming book by Magdalena Worłowska on the beginnings of environmentally engaged art in Poland. See: Magdalena Worłowska, Początki sztuki ekologicznie zaangażowanej w Polsce (Warsaw: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, 2025).) The scholarly interest in the rise of ecological awareness in the country at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s—and its reflection in art—comes together with the perceived need to rewrite the history of Polish culture so as to illuminate its multiple … Read more

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 by Mădălina Braşoveanu ·

On the Growing Distance Between the Two Sides of the River Elbe: Ana Lupaș Exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum and the Western Nostalgia for the Eastern Myth

In the summer of 2014, a (presumably) retrospective exhibition of the artist Ana Lupaș was organized in Cluj, in the spaces of a new building, “The Office”, destined to become a business hub. It was an exhibition behind closed doors, installed on the ground floor in rooms with glass walls that had been covered with opaque curtains. I remember how I knelt on the sidewalk by those huge windows and put my head to the ground, trying to see something from under the curtain. The exhibition had been organized for Tate London’s Acquisition Board for Eastern Europe, who were on … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Christopher Williams-Wynn ·

“Ende statt Wende”: Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt’s Typewritings and the Critique of German Reunification

When checking the mail in either of the two Germanys in February 1990, one might have expected to find the usual mixture of bills and junk, as well as personal correspondence and official letters. More unusually, the mailbox might have contained an SOS message: “This is a cry for help!” Written as a plea for support, notably in English, this short text called on individuals to write to the parliamentary bodies of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and decried the destruction of “social circumstances and rights” in the GDR. This distress signal had been … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Denisa Tomková ·

Practicing Solidarity in Slovakia: The Story of Kunsthalle Bratislava

Since the beginning of its mandate, the newly elected (2023) Slovak government has been spreading discriminatory, homophobic, and xenophobic narratives, and proposing new policies, usually without any public debate or negotiations with the professional public. The new Minister of Culture is Martina Šimkovičová from the Slovak National Party (SNS), who formerly worked at the private television station Markíza (from which she was fired after her hateful comments against refugees on social media in 2015).(Tomáš Kyseľ, “Z Markízy ju vyhodili, Pellegrini s ňou mal problém a médiám sa už teraz vyhráža. Kto je Martina Šimkovičová,” Aktuality.sk, October 17, 2023, https://www.aktuality.sk/clanok/yc6re50/z-markizy-ju-vyhodili-pellegrini-s-nou-mal-problem-a-mediam-sa-uz-teraz-vyhraza-kto-je-martina-simkovicova/… Read more

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 by Alina Șerban ·

In and Out of the Box: Leaps in East/East Dialogues Through the Transnational Activities of Constantin Flondor

A short glance at the East/East dialogues within the timeline of Romanian art of the 1970s and 1980s allows us to identify existing (in)formal cross-border exchanges which foregrounded geopolitical alliances and sporadically connected Romanian artists with like-minded spirits. In the artistic context of the 1970s and 1980s, the state institutions were responsible for foreign cultural agreements and the organization of research trips and touring exhibitions, as well as establishing cultural cooperation with other socialist countries. The assumption that traveling within the Bloc was possible without much difficulty does not always hold true since opportunities were mostly accessible to artists and … Read more

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 by Hana Buddeus ·

Photography: The Lingua Franca of Performance Art?

As Michelle Henning points out in her book Photography: The Unfettered Image (2018), “from its inception, photography was a means to set images free, to allow them to go traveling, to transfer, to be projected, translated, fragmented, reconstituted and reversed, to be reimagined and re-embodied.”(Michelle Henning, Photography: The Unfettered Image (New York: Routledge, 2018), p. xi.) How does this perspective contribute to understanding the medium beyond its treatment in art museums, which usually emphasize uniqueness and authorship? How does highlighting the concept of images as “migratory, journeying, wandering and vagabond”(Henning, p. 8.) alter our approach towards … Read more

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 by Zsuzsa László ·

Dictionaries of Friendship: Transnational Artistic Dialogues in First Person Plural

In 1978, Nick Waterlow, the artistic director of the third Sydney Biennale, “European Dialogue,” visited Budapest and agreed with the Hungarian art historian, László Beke that he would put together an informative exhibition of documents and original works covering the activities of several Hungarian artists. Beke, who was by then an internationally renowned advocate of East European Conceptualisms accepted this task but avoided the burdensome role of a national consultant by involving artists not only from Hungary but also from four other socialist countries. As he stated in the catalogue, he did not attempt to make an objective representation of … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by ARTMargins Online Editorial Collective ·

Ilya Kabakov (1933-2023)

One of the most noted 20th-century artists born in the USSR, Ilya Kabakov, died on May 27, 2023. It is no easy task to pay short tribute to a man of his ingenuity, diligence, discipline, and influence. Rather than publishing a standard obituary, ARTMargins Online editors asked some of the artist’s friends and collaborators, as well as critics and curators, to reflect, below, on his life and work from a personal perspective. The resulting collage of responses formally functions not unlike Kabakov’s own Answers of an Experimental Group (1971). This work compelled Boris Groys, one of Kabakov’s earliest commentators, to … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Vladimir Paperny, Maya Turovskaya† ·

Exchange of Ideologies: Ninotchka, 1939 — Circus, 1936

Below–and in conjunction with Sasha Razor’s interview with Vladimir Paperny, which we publish concurrently–we present a translated excerpt from a recently published book Paperny co-authored with noted late Russian film historian Maya Turovskaya, Cinema, Culture, and the Spirit of the Times (NLO: Moscow, 2023). Turovskaya and Paperny began their comparative study of US and Soviet cinema with two comedies: the mildly anti-Soviet Ninotchka and the strongly pro-Soviet film Circus. Ninotchka (1939), directed by Ernst Lubitsch, is a romantic comedy about a stern Soviet envoy, Nina Ivanovna “Ninotchka” Yakushova, who falls in love with a charming Parisian, Count Leon … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles / Conference

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 by Beáta Hock ·

Globalizing the Avant-Garde

Review of the conference organized by the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies (EAM) in Lisbon, September 1–3, 2022

Since 2008, the roving biennial conferences of the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies (EAM) have promoted the study of the avant-garde and modernism in Europe in a wide temporal and disciplinary framework, setting leading themes such as “High and Low“ (2010 Poznań), “Utopia” (2014 Helsinki), or “CRiSiS” in 2020. The mission statement and communications of the Network have always stressed the transnational aspects of avant-garde practices and indicated that Europe is to be considered in a global setting. … Read more

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 by Sjoukje van der Meulen ·

“Situated Solidarity”: A New Curatorial Model for the European Nomadic Biennial?

The fourteenth edition of the nomadic European biennial Manifesta took place in Prishtina, Kosovo, from July 22 to October 30, 2022. The biennial included 25 exhibition venues in an urban parcours throughout the city, ranging from (dilapidated) historic monuments and institutions to public squares, abandoned buildings, and unused or unexpected urban spaces. Four of these venues have been declared “major pillars,” namely the Grand Hotel Prishtina, The Center for Narrative Practices (a former library), an abandoned brick factory on the outskirts of the city, and the so-called Green Corridor, an unused train track that has been transformed into a walking … Read more

An artist is painting a black and white mural on the wall

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 by Biljana Purić ·

Live Solidarity — Art Workers and Feminist Artistic Organizing in the Post-Yugoslav Region

Equating all types of work and workers in his writing, Edvard Kardelj, one of the main ideators of the Yugoslav workers’ self-management system, set the scene for the understanding of the role of artists in Yugoslav society.(Edvard Kardelj, Pravci razvoja političkog sistema socijalističkog samoupravljanja (Beograd: Komunist, 1978), p. 25.) The idea of class solidarity and the equal value of work—regardless of it being intellectual or physical—was embraced, and many initiatives followed this idea, such as the art program at the Ironworks complex in Sisak, in present-day Croatia, where workers assisted artists, and collaborated with them in the creation … Read more

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 by Hella Wiedmer-Newman ·

Sold For Parts: Selma Selman’s Activist Practice

                                                                       “I don’t want art that points to a thing. I want art that is the thing.”

                                                                        –Tania Bruguera

 

In 2018, Selma Selman, an artist of Romani origin who grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina (henceforth referred to as Bosnia), set out to buy her freedom from her family. Recording her project on film, she negotiated a fair price to make up for the dowry her parents would forgo in not marrying her off. She proceeded to sell her hair, her clothes, and her artworks before officially making the exchange of $11,166 for her independence. Selman’s aim was, in … Read more

In an all-white room, a diagonal bench has four white drawings on top of it. Beneath the bench is a video monitor with a video showing a person in white falling upwards into a ceiling of sand.

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 by Nora Goleshevska ·

Dream Compass: “There You Are,” or the Bulgarian Pavilion in the Context of the 59th Venice Biennial

“Images are (…) a silent language. They are a station on the way from silence to language. They stand on the frontier where silence and language face each other closer than anywhere else, but the tension between them is resolved by beauty. Images and pictures remind man of life before the coming of language. They move him with a yearning for that life (…) It is the soul that preserves the silent images of things”.(Max Picard, Images and Silence, in The World of Silence (Minnesota: Harvill, 1948), p. 80.)

The Bulgarian Pavilion at the 59th edition … Read more

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 by ARTMargins Online Editorial Collective ·

László Beke (1944–2022): A Collective Obituary

László Beke, the Hungarian curator and art historian who from the late 1960s became one of the key catalysts of art networks and cross-border collaborations within and beyond Eastern Europe‚ died on January 31 of this year. He published articles, compiled publications, lectured, curated projects and exhibitions on various aspects of progressive art, including Conceptualism, photography, semiotics, Fluxus, Dada, and the post-contemporary (referring to the situation after the era of contemporary art), and, most importantly, pursued his utopian commitment to East European art. Between 1969 and 1986 he was a research fellow at the Research Institute for Art History of … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Sven Spieker, Susan Snodgrass, Camilla Salvaneschi ·

ARTMargins Online Eastern European Art Periodicals Map

The AMO interactive Eastern European Art Periodicals Map (2022) is the result of four years of research by Camilla Salvaneschi (IUAV, Venice); Susan Snodgrass (AMO); and Sven Spieker (AMO), and it has benefited from the generous help of several others.(Ian Gabe Wilson, who conducted invaluable initial research, and Russell Coon (pielabmedia.com), who designed the map.) Its goal is to demonstrate intellectual affinities between currently active art-focused periodicals published in the region, revealing in the process the material conditions of art writing and art publishing in Eastern Europe today.

The Eastern European Art Periodicals Map recalls Irwin’s  East Art … Read more

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 by Mechtild Widrich ·

From Rags to Monuments: Ana Lupaş’s Humid Installation

How can we, in the middle of a heated debate around public monuments as highly visible and dominant bearers of history around the world, perceive the more layered and subtle aspects of commemorative practice? Reflection on anti-, counter- and performative monuments has not abated, but been absorbed in the current worldwide struggle to remove, replace, and otherwise neutralize monuments spatializing unjust power. That is all to the good, as long as we don’t forget that monuments, and artists, can do things that bear witness against impossible odds—and without erecting anything permanent. In this essay I look at several iterations of … Read more

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 by Karolina Majewska-Güde ·

In Search of Parallel Worlds: A Portrait of Ilija Šoškić

Ilija Šoškić, born in 1935 in present-day Kosovo (then part of Yugoslavia), and raised in present-day Montenegro, became the most known representative of the Montenegrin neo-avant-garde, although the artist would never call himself that. Rejecting any nationalist aspirations of the post-Yugoslav states, he sees himself instead as a nomad or a pilgrim(I refer to the title of Šoškić’s performance Pilgrimage (Hero’s Walk), from a 1975 performance realized at the Hohenzollern Castle, in Tubingen, Germany.)—somebody constantly on the road. Nevertheless, he has returned on several occasions to Montenegro and currently is based in neighboring Croatia.

Šoškić’s actions, installations, and … Read more

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 by Octavian Esanu ·

Mark Verlan (1963-2020): An Absolute Totality

Moldovan artist Mark Verlan passed away in Chişinău on the eve of this new year. Known by many names – Marioka Son of Rain (Marioca fiul ploii in Romanian and Marioca sin dozhdea in Russian), Marioca Son-and-Rain, or simply Mark, Marc, Maric, or Marik – he died at the age of 57 of a heart attack. Some names were given to him, others he chose (like his nom d’artiste “Son of Rain”), and the rest are the result of Moldova’s bilingualism, or the local preference for diminutives used to convey endearment or playful respect. His many names and spellings … Read more