September 2-3, 2021

Conference organising committee: Barbara Borčić, Sandra Križić Roban, Marika Kuźmicz Lana Lovrenčić, Andra Silapētere

Organisers: Arton Foundation, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art- LCCA Riga, Center for Contemporary Arts – SCCA-Ljubljana & Office for Photography, Zagreb

Official language of the conference: ENG, the conference will be translated to Polish and will be held in Warsaw time.

We would like to invite you to take part in the conference Not Yet Written Stories. Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe, which will be held on 2–3 September as an online event (on the Zoom platform). The conference is organised by the Arton Foundation (Warsaw), the Latvian Center for Contemporary Arts (Riga), SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts, (Ljubljana) and the Office for Photography (Zagreb). The scholarly sin of omission, and the exclusion of works by women from the canon of art history have resulted in the erasure of the achievements of numerous women artists. Such “amnesia” in history writing processes has been widespread and has been happening regardless of the socio-political situation. However, women artists as well as art historians, critics, curators and gallerists in culturally and economically “peripheral” countries, such as those behind the Iron Curtain, and in the former Yugoslavia, have been at risk of double exclusion on the grounds of both geography and gender. In parallel to the development of new states and socialist societies after WW2, women built themselves up not only politically and culturally, but also artistically. Nevertheless, instead of the anticipated advancement of women in various fields, society and its power structures continued to support the traditionally predominant patriarchal view. To counteract that situation, the Arton Foundation (Warsaw), the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts (Riga), SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts (Ljubljana), and the Office for Photography (Zagreb) in 2019 collectively launched the project Not Yet Written Stories: Women Artists’ Archives On-line. It focuses on women artists from Poland, Latvia, Croatia and Slovenia in order to raise awareness of recent historical events in Central and Eastern Europe and consequently stimulate new readings of history. The project not only maps regional contexts and collaborations, but also aims to reconsider common points of history-writing processes while investigating gender in a social, political, cultural, and artistic context within Central and Eastern Europe. Taking this project as the starting point, the partners are now organising the conference Not Yet Written Stories. Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe. The conference presents a wide context of the roles of women in the arts and culture with papers reflecting the topics in twelve countries, from Latvia to Bulgaria and from Ukraine to Croatia.

The two-day conference will comprise seven panels devoted to issues such as the work of women artists in the field of both new media and textiles, for example, women’s artistic education, socially and politically engaged art, and many others.

The conference will be inaugurated by a lecture by Professor Leonida Kovač entitled Subversion of the normative heterosexuality in the self-representational works of Nasta Rojc.

The accompanying events will include the screening of Sonja Savić’s films and a performance by Ana Čigon entitled Dear Ladies, Thank you (2011-2013)

The project is part of the Creative Europe program. Co-financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport. If you have any questions, please contact Dr Marika Kuźmicz marika.kuzmicz@fundacjaarton.pl

More info is on the direct link.