ROMANIAN CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ARTS WORLD AFTER 1989: TENSION AND FRAGMENTATION
ROMANIAN CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ARTS WORLD AFTER 1989: TENSION AND FRAGMENTATION

Summary/Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of the contemporary visual arts world in post-communist Romania, with focus on its institutions. More than twenty years after the fall of the Communist regime, this visual arts world is still a highly tense and fragmented one, comparing to other Central-Eastern European contemporary visual arts worlds. My hypothesis is that this state is rooted in the institutional shifts generated by the transition from a totalitarian regime to a democratic one. Therefore, the reconfiguration of the institutional system of contemporary visual arts after ’89 and its impact on the artistic practices, as well as its reception among art professionals, stand out as a crucial object of analysis. The aim is to highlight the structural features of the Romanian contemporary visual arts world that led to the present-day fragmentation, as well as to explain the acute tension that characterizes the relationships among its actors. Additionally, I propose a brief comparison with the Hungarian visual arts world in order to emphasize the specificity of the Romanian one.

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