Art, Liberation, and the Emigration Experience

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel will discuss the multifarious experience of emigration from Eastern Europe and the role that art plays in emancipation, the formation of new identities, and the negotiation of cultural legacy in new social and cultural contexts. Our aim is to highlight the complexity of emigration and to examine its impact on selected artists from Eastern Europe. We also seek to explore the ways in which art and literary narratives address the themes of emigration, displacement, and exile, which can be dually construed: as liberation from cultural, political, and/or economic oppression and as barely tolerable compulsion. Our focus will be on investigating how artistic expression serves as a medium for resilience, resistance, and reclamation of agency. To probe these issues, the panel will present four case studies that offer insights into the intertwinings of emigration, identity, and art. Maurycy Amster and Marian Rawicz will illustrate the resolution of identity problems through the universalization of the language of art and making art a mediator between aesthetic values and the needs of everyday life. Another case concerns the possibilities of the arts in facilitating the liberating identity dialogue between Germans and Poles over the Western Territories. Last, but not least, Elżbieta Jabłońska will showcase art as an intervention for Polish women in unwilling emigration.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Zakhar Ishov, Uppsala U (Sweden)

Papers

• Liberating Dialogue and the Arts: The Experience of Polish Settlers in the Western Territories - Leszek Koczanowicz, SWPS U (Poland)

• The Kitchen as a Metaphor for the Discomfort of Emigration - Dorota Koczanowicz, U of Wrocław (Poland)

• Liberation through Art: The Case of Maurycy Amster - Marcin Kurek, U of Wrocław (Poland)

• Marian Rawicz: 'Weak Identity' vis-à-vis Epistemic Injustice - Justyna Ziarkowska, U of Wrocław (Poland)

Discussant

• Zakhar Ishov, Uppsala U (Sweden)