Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe Monroe Courtesy XL Gallery, Moscow, © Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe 1996

Twenty years after the fall of the Iron curtain this exhibition will be dedicated to depicting issues of gender and the role of the sexes in the art of Eastern Europe.
Subject-specific paintings, photographs, posters, sculptures, installations, films and videos produced since the mid-Sixties by around 70 artists in individual Eastern and South-Eastern European countries will be shown and will reflect on the socio-political developments in popular culture as well as the successors of the avant-garde. The 'genderless society' propagated in communism was not reflected in equality between male and female artists. It was only in the 1970s that women artists who were concerned with a critical confrontation with role clichés through performative and body-related art made their appearance. However in the 1980s this development which has been called 'latent feminism' lost importance as a consequence of the reception of neo-conservative painting. With the collapse of the communist regimes at the beginning of the 1990s, tendencies towards nationalism, capitalism, religion and patriarchy increased in Eastern Europe. This was accompanied by conservative notions of gender roles and provided a challenge to analytical artistic positions. The exhibition will take place on the initiative and with the support of the ERSTE Stiftung.

Curator
Bojana Pejic