The Nomadic Artists of the Balkans. The Panorama of Emerging Contemporary Art in the Balkans and Its Migration To and From the World

Abstract

This paper attempts to define the city as an intercultural place, a place of exchange of cultures and more specifically will try to identify where the artists from the Balkans are placed on the international art scene, as well as the degree of influence of the world globalization system and its direct and indirect effects on the Region's artistic production. We are concerned about the difficulties that have delayed the inclusion of this European region in the world art scene, as a consequence of negative historical legacies, political, economic, religious and cultural instability and vulnerability, as well as wars caused by geographical and ideological fragmentation. We analyze the idea that due to religious and ethnical problems as well as internal political instability that have emerged after the fall of the regime, the development of contemporary art in the area had not started until only about a decade ago. We are trying to understand the situation of the current art scene in the region through the eyes of artists who export nomadic Balkan culture (to the world). Furthermore these artists also import different cultures, so that they become an engine of the cultural and artistic development in the Balkans (from the world). We will focus on the Balkan artists exiled to Europe or the United States, such as Adrian Paci, Nedko Solakov, Mariana Vassileva or Çavusoglu Ergin. The dimension of the artists chosen for this study is spatial, not aiming to offer any kind of division or simplistic stereotypes, but to find positive cultural processes of discovering one's own identity, however not anymore as "Balkan", but as cosmopolitan and universal. Because we could not deny the identity and cultural importance of the geostrategic characteristics of the Balkans as well as the enriching mix of cultural hybridism that represents the bridge between Europe and Asia, between East and West...