A Spring Of Hope, A Winter Of Despair

About

In the late 1960s, the 1970s and in the following decade unofficial art in the former Eastern Bloc developed conceptual practices under controlled and restricted artistic conditions. These practices, that share certain similarities in terms of idea and aesthetics, content and form, are the result of various levels of permeability within the political regimes that allowed a certain degree of international cultural openness, thus formulating a non-homogenous territory and an unequal position of solidarity. Unique compared to its Western counterpart, the conceptual art of the Eastern Bloc formulated its own agenda in dealing with political oppression, yet finding ways of adaptation and contact not only within these territories, but also with the West and other continents. Faced with different historical backgrounds and political turmoil - given the events of the Prague Spring, followed by the Invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union from 1968, the totalitarian regime imposed by the president Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Communist Party of the Social Republic of Romania, especially after the July 1971 Thesis, as well as the austerity policies of the 198os -, Romania and Czechoslovakia are linked within the Eastern Bloc, sharing the hopes and despair generated by ideological repression.

The selection of works by Romanian and Czech artists formulates a particular visual and theoretical framework for understanding the common struggles and tools of expression in a context of limitations where individual practices, more frequent than collaborative ones, share common interests. The chronological layer, which also tracks the transition years after the fall of the Iron Curtain as well as the contemporary times, intersects with a transhistorical layer from totalitarianism to capitalism, allowing for a generous perspective on the multi-faceted realities and artistic expressions fueled by despair through the social practice of hope.