Tactical Withdrawals. Eastern Europe as Master

About

Under the pressure of communist totalitarianism, Eastern Europe’s art worlds generated in the post-war period a polythetic set of specific attitudes, from self-censorship to more or less covert protest, from retreats in ivory towers to tolerated or even encouraged dissents, from compromise to propagandistic collaboration, from denial to irony, from outward exiles to inner exiles. An attitudinal disposition that seems to have amply infused the Romanian artistic production of the time, becoming simultaneously existential positioning and inner atmosphere, can be best defined as withdrawal. Withdrawal is both a tactical repertoire and an existential stance. It involves imprecise anxiety, prudence, courage, reflection, escapism, interiorization, idiosyncratic scrutiny of reality, imprecise heroism, as well as tacit, tense resignations.

Leaving aside their actual social status, which can vary from “favorite” of political power to “suspect” in its eyes, a certain consubstantiality in diffuse anguish generates improbable similarities, in the tactical spectrum of withdrawal, between artists whose works can be acutely diverse, stylistically or thematically. They are artists who often configure themselves as strange identities, from vaguely heroic to elliptically evasive and who build images and visual objects, in which the elements of external reality often end up being reassembled according to a logic foreign to their contexts of origin.

Bogdan Iacob, curator

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This project is financed with the support of EEA Grants 2014 – 2021 within the RO-CULTURE Program.

The EEA Grants represent the contribution of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway towards a green, competitive and inclusive Europe. There are two overall objectives: reduction of economic and social disparities in Europe, and to strengthen bilateral relations between the donor countries and 15 EU countries in Central and Southern Europe and the Baltics.

The three donor countries cooperate closely with the EU through the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA). The donors have provided €3.3 billion through consecutive grant schemes between 1994 and 2014. For the period 2014-2021, the EEA Grants amount to €1.55 billion. More info on: www.eeagrants.org and www.eeagrants.ro

RO-CULTURE is implemented in Romania by the Ministry of Culture through the Project Management Unit. The Programme aims at strengthening social and economic development through cultural cooperation, cultural entrepreneurship and cultural heritage management. The total budget amounts to 34 million EUR. More details are available on www.ro-cultura.ro