The art history of the countries of Eastern Europe before 1989 was written, according to Piotr Piotrowski, more on the basis of ‘state apparatuses’ than ‘ethnicity’. Immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the afterglow of the internationalist ideals of socialism could still be felt, while the desire for free and open communication across state, ideological and national borders was predominant. Subsequently, the first post-communist decade saw the rise of identity politics, during which a national prefix became an obligatory addition to survey exhibitions of contemporary art in the countries of the former Eastern Blok.

There were parallels in the countries of the ‘former West’ where contemporary art was mobilised in campaigns of national rebranding, most sensationally in the UK where the YBAs were enlisted in the marketing of ‘cool Britannia’. Identity politics was also manifested in a post-modern attitude towards the strategic construction of alternative poles of cultural identity, and lay behind the invention of the categories of East European art, Baltic art and Balkan art.

Although the notion of East European art was framed at the level of a geographically and historically-determined region, in practice there was no contradiction with the habit of exaggerating the importance of national traditions in contemporary art. Characteristically exhibitions such as Aspects/Positions (1999) were organised federatively, as a collection of canonical narratives, and resisted the temptations of transnational synthesis.

This paper discusses the changing understanding of the national in contemporary art since the End of Communism and the shift of interest during the second post-communist decade away from issues of identity in both its national and regional formulations towards an exploration of the possibilities of a post-national sense of belonging, associated with the deterritorialisation and synchronicity of the globalised cultural scene in the era of post-transition.

Maja and Reuben Fowkes