‘A Strange, Curious, and Creative City’: Modernism and Transculturation in Interwar Lviv

• In Event: Urban Transformations and Cultural Negotiations: Space, Identity, and Power in Interwar Eastern Europe and the USSR

Abstract

There is no singular history of Lviv, but rather multiple competing histories formulated by the imagined communities that lived and experienced the city. This paper examines interwar Lviv as a space of transcultural exchange and collaboration among Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish modernist artists, writers, and designers. Rather than the image of a static city whose identity can be reduced to its contested status on a periphery, what emerges from their exhibitions and publication activities is an ongoing process of transculturation that follows from the shifting of political borders, ethnic pluralism, migration, and multilingualism. This paper argues that the creative activities, personal connections, and artistic networks of these individuals attempted to reconceive the narrative of the city and re-imagine its geographies against the dominant ideologies of nationalism and exclusion.

Author

• Karolina Koczynska, Pratt Institute