PERSPECTIVES ON ART HISTORIES IN THE BALKANS
Actors, Networks, and Practices from the Early Modern to the Contemporary
18-20 March 2026, Paris, INHA

/for French, see below/

Vlado Martek, USA – Balkan, 2019, peinture murale, vue d’installation dans l’exposition “With Many Titles”, Rijeka, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 2019. Courtesy Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Croatia and the artist. Photo credit: Damir Žižić

Les résumés sont attendus avant le 30 juin 2025, et seront adressés à l’adresse suivante : conferenceartsbalkans@gmail.com
Sélection des communications retenues : septembre 2025

Proposals are due by June 30, 2025, and should be sent to the following address: conferenceartsbalkans@gmail.com
We shall review all proposals during September 2025.

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The symposium “Perspectives on Art Histories in the Balkans: Actors, Networks, and Practices from the Early Modern to the Contemporary” is designed to be a forum for dialogue between academic researchers and cultural players. Devoted to the visual art of the Balkans, this will be the first of a series of triannual meetings bringing together in one place the fields of art research and artistic creation. The symposium is organized by a number of French research centers, and will be held at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris. With the goal of stimulating new dynamics of research, it is open to the entire range of topics addressed by such disciplines as art history, the history of architecture, and the history of cinema.

In the absence of a French specific tradition in the art history of the modern and contemporary Balkans, other disciplines (history, sociology, geography, anthropology, political science, and literature and language studies) have filled the void, supplying their various viewpoints on the objects of study. French and Francophone research is, in fact, made up of these contributions, and it is strongly marked by these intersecting methodologies and epistemologies. The same is true geographically, since the art of the Balkans has often been studied as a part of wider areal, political, or confessional frameworks. As a result of these boundary crossings, it has become possible to analyze artistic practices through transdisciplinary and transnational perspectives. Today, a new generation of specialists and researchers, as well as cultural players, are continuing these investigations, with conscious attention given to formal and aesthetic questions.

This conference takes its place, therefore, within the new academic tendency seeking to reevaluate, in terms of content and methodology, the frames of reference underpinning the study of the arts. The approach will be primarily diachronic (following initial artistic creation through its transformations), with the aim of establishing dialogue between studies of imperial dynamics in the modern era and research on the contemporary Balkans. Such boundary crossing will make possible the study of the formal, conceptual, and material development of the artworks by bringing to light borrowings, overlappings, and tensions. By including this wider historical dimension, the conference aims to explore, beyond heritage studies, the multi-faceted materiality of artworks.

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