History of Art and Architecture

HAA Distinguished Alumna Lecture by Professor Izabel Galliera

Thursday, April 12, 2018 - 4:00pm

Room 202, Frick Fine Arts Building

“Self-Institutionalizing As Political Agency: Contemporary Art Practice in Bucharest and Budapest”

Professor Izabel Galliera - HAA Alumna / McDaniel College

Reacting against politically monopolizing attempts at rewriting the socialist past in post-1989 Hungary and Romania, a diverse number of artists, curators, critics, activists and students came together to form temporary organizations and institutions. Through a contextual reading and critical analysis of The Department for Art in Public Space (2009–2011) in Bucharest and DINAMO (2003–2006) and IMPEX (2006–2009) in Budapest, Professor Galliera will investigate what she refers to as “self-institutionalizing” and the ways in which this practice becomes a vehicle to rear politicized civil societies in post-cold war Central and Eastern Europe. This discussion of the two self-institutionalizing initiatives in Romania and Hungary seeks to contribute to and complicate the official and institutionalized narrative of institutional critique rooted in a North American context. Professor Galliera’s talk is based on her recently published book Socially Engaged Art after Socialism: Art and Civil Society in Post Communist Europe (I.B. Tauris 2017).  It examines artists in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania who have reclaimed public life from both communist regimes and neoliberalism, and who have harnessed the politically subversive potential of social relations based on trust, reciprocity and solidarity.

This lecture is part of the "Marx@200" series of lectures, seminars, and exhibitions organized by Professor Kathleen Newman for the Humanities Center of Carnegie Mellon University.

Followed by a Reception in the Seminar Room, Room 104

Image details: Poster for “Communism Hasn’t Happened … Yet!,” the first “Café-Bar Manifest,” of the Department of Art in Public Space, initiated by E-cart.ro, 2009. Graphic design by Eduard Constantin. Image courtesy of E-cart.ro