Depicting the Past Futures: An Artistic Engagement with Post-Colonial and Post-Authoritarian Contexts

• In Event: Cosmologies, Affects, Allyships: Decolonial Resonances in Polish Contemporary Art

Abstract

This paper proposes to analyse the archival, historiographic and decolonial turn in contemporary art that arose in response to post-authoritarian, post-communist, and post-crisis contexts. It references the German philosopher Reinhart Koselleck’s concept of Vergangene Zukunft (the past future) and his idea of the multiplicity of historical times, Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe’s notion of the time of entanglement, and Argentine-Mexican sociologist Néstor García Canclini’s concept of multitemporal heterogeneity. Through an examination of recent hybridized artworks by Clemente Padín (Uruguay), Marek Sobczyk (Poland), Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola), Michael Rakowitz (Iraq and United States) and Tamás Kaszás (Hungary), the paper focuses on how these artists construct metahistorical narratives about domination and resistance from images taken from high and popular culture. These works are responses to post-authoritarian trauma, socio-political crisis, and a general state of ideological confusion characteristic of world regions placed between major centres of power. The oil on canvas Ganja (14 December 1981) by Marek Sobczyk that portrays ironically General Wojciech Jaruzelski, responsible for the proclamation of martial law in Poland on December 13, 1981 will be juxtaposed with the image of Ernesto Che Guevara hybridized with Marylin Monroe by Clemente Padín and the image of the Black Lenin by Kuiluanji Kia Henda. Rather than referencing historical facts, the artists make reference to popular culture, personal experiences, memories, expectations, and (unfulfilled) hopes or (uncompleted) past projects. Yet their aim in creating these artworks, mockuments, and artist’s books is to construct not fictional narratives, but historical ones

Author

• Katarzyna Cytlak, Nicolaus Copernicus U (Poland)