With great excitement, I participated in the ASEEES (Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) annual conference in Philadelphia, PA, on Saturday, December 2, 2023.
Panel participants at the ASEEES in Philadelphia. From the left: Josie Johnson, Alise Tifentale, Maria Garth, Liāna Ivete Žilde, and Līga Goldberga. Photo: Alise Tifentale.
In the role of a discussant, I was part of the panel, "Informed Bodies: Decolonizing the Politics of Representation in Late Soviet Photography," together with Josie Johnson (Stanford University) as the chair, and presenters Līga Goldberga (Art Academy of Latvia/University of Latvia), Liāna Ivete Žilde (Art Academy of Latvia/University of Latvia), and Maria Garth (Rutgers University).
Two of the three presentations - papers by Līga and Maria - discussed the legacy of the artist and photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011). To me, his was a very special panel both professionally and personally, as I’m Dzividzinska’s daughter and also the curator of her archive and estate, Art Days Forever (www.artdays.net).
Brief description of the panel
“This panel focuses on the representation of women as models and photographers in late Soviet photography of the Baltic region from the 1960s and 1980s . Relying on theoretical approaches informed by gender studies, the posthumanist perspective, and critical theories such as postcolonial discourse, this panel investigates the notion of the “informed body” from three distinct vantage points: the body of the female model in nude photography and self-portraiture; the body of the photographic archive that holds traces of its biography; and the body of knowledge regarding the production of the history of photography. These “bodies,” oppressed by the Soviet cultural policies and/or societal norms, have remained invisible long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Decolonizing the politics of representation requires revision of patriarchal art canons through the illumination of women photographer’s archives; acknowledgement of the cultural diversity of the USSR by studying non-Russian regions such as the Baltics; and adding nuance to Western art photography discourses by attending to regional specificities of post-Soviet photography. Through close readings of artists’ works and examination of the circulation of their archives, the panelists analyze the gendered condition of photography and the politics of discovering and inscribing photography from the late Soviet Union into broader art-historical narratives.”
Discussion following the presentations. Photo: Josie Johnson.
Find out more about this panel!
Read more on the Art Days Forever website - https://www.artdays.net/news/aseees2023 - including more photos from the presentations, full abstracts of all three papers, and more!