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Blacklisted artists exhibited
Published: 11-29-11
By Corey Stolzenbach, Contributing Writer
What if you were an artist forced to work under a dictatorial government?
The art exhibit, “Unfree Freedom: An Exploration of Identity in Central Europe,” opened on Oct. 29 and is curated by Janeil Englestad of threewalls, a cultural organization in Chicago that focuses on cultivating art.
The showcase includes the work of blacklisted artists created during oppressive European regimes and what their work was like after the revolutions.
“I wanted people to have the opportunity to see how artists who were not officially recognized by the socialist regimes, as well as [how] younger artists, who came of age after communism ended, were responding to the world around them,” Englestad said.
Jessica Cochran, curator of exhibitions at Columbia, said students could gain perspective from the gallery.
“Because the show features artists who have been working before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Central Europe, I hope it will give students a little bit of a perspective of what it might be like to be an artist working underneath an oppressive regime,” Cochran said.
On display are the works of artists Rudolf Sikora and Peter Szabo. Sikora is a Slovak who focused on themes outside of government. He co-founded the group Public Against Violence, which played a role in the 1989 fall of the communist government in then-Czechoslovakia.
The gallery displays Szabo’s work from the Delta-Haggadah series, which contains images of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and imprisonments, as well as 11 charcoal still sketches from that time.
According to Jeremy Jennings, arts entertainment and media management and audio arts and acoustics double major who works at the exhibit, 135 people visited the gallery during the first 10 days. Jennings was fond of some of the displayed work.
“You have the opportunity to really stop and feel [the artwork] as you’re working,” Jennings said. “Just getting to spend time around here is a neat experience.”
Englestad will conduct a curator talk on Dec. 9 at 11 a.m. She will discuss artists’ books, as well as works on paper in the former Soviet countries.
“Created for political protest, social critique and to promote independent thought, this work is increasingly relevant today as artists participate in and respond to Occupy [Wall Street] and other social movements,” Englestad said.
The free exhibit is on the second floor of the Conaway Center, 1104 S. Wabash Ave., until Dec. 10, from Tuesdays through Saturdays at 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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Thank you for your article about “UnFree Freedom: An Exploration of Identity in Central Europe” curated in conjunction with “Voices From the Center” a project that I produced at threewalls. However, I do not work for threewalls, rather I am an independent artist curator working internationally and based in San Francisco and Dallas.
As the article states, the exhibition includes work by former dissidents, as well as young, emerging artists who are responding to a new set of freedoms and constraints, brought about by democracy, capitalism and globalization. Peter Szabo, who was a child when communism ended, is one of these artists. The drawings from the Delta-Haggadah series examine the wave of imprisonments that were an aftermath of the revolution in Hungary in 1956, rather than the revolution itself, through the exploration of one particular family’s experiences beginning in the early 1960s.
Other work in the exhibition looks at a variety of political and social concerns that are as relevant in the United States as they are in Central Europe.
Janeil Engelstad