CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Chmielewska, Marta |
|---|---|
| Title | The 'Sign of the Cross' exhibition as a polyphonic political statement in the 1980s Polish art field |
| Summary | The thesis examines “Sign of the Cross” exhibition that took place in the Catholic church on Żytnia street in 1983 in Warsaw, and how it connects to the anti-state symbolism of the political discourse of the era. The work aims to analyze the entanglement of religion, nationalism, and politics in the artistic production of late socialism with regard to the broad political context concerning the change of the regime in 1989. By applying Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and Bourdieu’s theory of field, it evaluates the complexities of the identity politics of the resistance movement expressed through artistic production. The thesis brings together the resistance and the artists scholarship to challenge the existing knowledge about the phenomenon of church exhibitions, a mass movement in the Polish art field in the 1980s that gathered socially engaged artists who supporter the anti-state resistance marked by the Solidarity Carnival. For this, in the first chapter, I focus on the use of religious and national symbolism in the anti-state political field in the 1980s to evaluate what type of exclusions and politics it produces. In the second chapter, I use the historical background to evaluate the position of “Sign of the Cross” exhibition within the possible artistic expression. In the final chapter by analyzing three distinct artworks and artistic careers, I show three different relationship participants of “Sign of the Cross” formed with the state, the resistance movement, and the Church. |
| Supervisor | Alexandra Kowalski |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/chmielewska_marta.pdf |
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