Participating in the ASEEES (Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) conference in Philadelphia

With great excitement, I participated in the ASEEES (Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies) annual conference in Philadelphia, PA, on Saturday, December 2, 2023.

Panel participants at the ASEEES in Philadelphia. From the left: Josie Johnson, Alise Tifentale, Maria Garth, Liāna Ivete Žilde, and Līga Goldberga. Photo: Alise Tifentale.

In the role of a discussant, I was part of the panel, "Informed Bodies: Decolonizing the Politics of Representation in Late Soviet Photography," together with Josie Johnson (Stanford University) as the chair, and presenters Līga Goldberga (Art Academy of Latvia/University of Latvia), Liāna Ivete Žilde (Art Academy of Latvia/University of Latvia), and Maria Garth (Rutgers University).

Two of the three presentations - papers by Līga and Maria - discussed the legacy of the artist and photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011). To me, his was a very special panel both professionally and personally, as I’m Dzividzinska’s daughter and also the curator of her archive and estate, Art Days Forever (www.artdays.net).

Brief description of the panel

“This panel focuses on the representation of women as models and photographers in late Soviet photography of the Baltic region from the 1960s and 1980s . Relying on theoretical approaches informed by gender studies, the posthumanist perspective, and critical theories such as postcolonial discourse, this panel investigates the notion of the “informed body” from three distinct vantage points: the body of the female model in nude photography and self-portraiture; the body of the photographic archive that holds traces of its biography; and the body of knowledge regarding the production of the history of photography. These “bodies,” oppressed by the Soviet cultural policies and/or societal norms, have remained invisible long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Decolonizing the politics of representation requires revision of patriarchal art canons through the illumination of women photographer’s archives; acknowledgement of the cultural diversity of the USSR by studying non-Russian regions such as the Baltics; and adding nuance to Western art photography discourses by attending to regional specificities of post-Soviet photography. Through close readings of artists’ works and examination of the circulation of their archives, the panelists analyze the gendered condition of photography and the politics of discovering and inscribing photography from the late Soviet Union into broader art-historical narratives.”

Click here to find more information about the panel and the participants on the ASEEES conference website!

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Discussion following the presentations. Photo: Josie Johnson.

Find out more about this panel!

Read more on the Art Days Forever website - https://www.artdays.net/news/aseees2023 - including more photos from the presentations, full abstracts of all three papers, and more!

Talk at the seminar "Likeness in Difference. Perspectives on Baltic Regional Art History" in Tallinn

Thrilled to think and write about my recent archival research discoveries: my talk “Invisible Photography: Discovery and Interpretation of Zenta Dzividzinska’s (1944-2011) Archive” in the panel discussion "Invisible Photography" was part of the seminar "Likeness in Difference. Perspectives on Baltic Regional Art History in Tallinn, Estonia, May 14, 2022.

The panel was chaired by Annika Toots, and the participants were Alise Tifentale, Agnė Narušytė and Annika Toots.

Download the seminar program as pdf here, and find out more about the seminar on the Kumu Art Museum website.

Photo courtesy of Jana Kukaine.

Seminar “Likeness in Difference. Perspectives on Baltic Regional Art History” took place in the Estonian Academy of Arts and Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia, May 13-14, 2022. It brought together art researchers and curators from the three Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Art history of the Soviet period served as the point of departure for the seminar.

Photo courtesy of Inga Lāce.

The abstract of my talk, “Invisible Photography: Discovery and Interpretation of Zenta Dzividzinska’s Archive”:

I'd like to propose the topic of invisible photography—such as photography that has survived only in negatives—in the broader context of preservation and interpretation of Soviet-era women-photographers' archives. Focusing on a case study of the private archive and estate of Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011), a Latvian artist and photographer active locally and internationally in the 1960s, I'd like to speak about the cultural, social, and political circumstances that had rendered her work invisible until very recently.  At the center of Dzividzinska's legacy is a vast collection of hundreds of negatives and prints depicting the daily life of three generations of women as it unfolded in and around their small house in the Latvian countryside as well as self-portraits and collaborative work produced together with other young female artists and art students while she studied at the art school in Riga. She was misunderstood for most of her lifetime, and only since the 2000s her legacy has begun to attract interest from art historians, curators, and contemporary artists. But one of the main challenges for anyone who would be interested in her work is that it is invisible. Museum curators or collectors typically are interested in “great” artworks—they look for large-size, excellent quality, well-preserved vintage prints ready for framing and exhibiting. But Dzividzinska did not make many exhibition-size prints during the 1960s. Her most radical work at the time was not thought of as exhibitable, so it exists in small test prints or only in the form of negative because Dzividzinska not always had the time and resources to produce any prints at all.

Learn more about life and works of Zenta Dzividzinska: www.artdays.net

Photo courtesy of Šelda Puķīte.

Watch my presentation and the following discussion on YouTube:

Watch the lively discussion that followed our panel:

Browse the slides from my presentation: