This article aims to provide a brief overview of some aspects of the rich and idiosyncratic history of socialist Yugoslavia’s participation in building a cultural network on the international scene, focusing mostly on the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which was meant to counter forms of Western hegemony in global culture. While there has been a great deal written about the forms of Yugoslav counter-cultural or avant-garde and neo-avant-garde projects, as well as studies of Yugoslavia’s ties with the West during socialism, there has been less attention paid to mainstream and state-sponsored practices which were aimed at supporting nascent NAM cultural work.Footnote 1 Whereas many authors have written about Yugoslavia’s fairly liberal cultural cooperation with the United States and Western Europe, my interest is in understanding how its robust economic, political, and cultural work operated within the NAM, and what kinds of cultural products and practices arose from it. In the first part of the text, I briefly summarize the broad historical context for Yugoslavia’s cultural activism within international fora and via NAM organization. After that I look at several examples which fall under the rubric of cultural activism and diplomacy: Yugoslavia’s work with UNESCO (and UNSECO-related international associations) as part of a strategy to use UN agencies and other international bodies to change policy and cultural institutions for the benefit of smaller nations; several examples of bilateral cultural contracts that provided what Trinh Van Dinh called the “tactics” for NAM members to counter varied forms of cultural imperialism; and finally a broad overview of exhibitions, concentrating on the Ljubljana Biennale of the Graphic Arts as the most internationally visible example. All these forms of cooperation were developed through bilateral agreements and were maintained with funds from the Yugoslav federal and republic-level budgets. The argument presented is that contrary to attempts to redefine the NAM as an institution of political opportunism, through its history of continued and painstaking work on transnational solidarity, collaboration, and coexistence within the field of culture, Yugoslavia and the NAM managed to create intriguing models of alternative cultural production which paralleled those of the Western world. These networks, I argue, were the vanguard of what would become contemporary global culture.
The case of Yugoslav participation in the NAM has always been curious to some observers, yet, when the material history of its involvement is traced, what we discover is that for Yugoslavia, political and cultural struggles for recognition, self-sufficiency, and agency grew out of a centuries-long struggle to overcome various forms of colonial rule.Footnote 2 Nonaligned cultural ties therefore represent an important attempt to create new forms of culture that would support indigeneity (or autochthon sovereignty), political liberation, coexistence, anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism. Parts of these efforts can be defined as cultural diplomacy, but there is more to the activities of cultural workers in NAM countries. Their work was also entangled with cultural-political activism intent on transforming not only the discourse of cultural representation (i.e., who is represented and how in various international cultural fora), but, more importantly, they saw culture as an integral part of political liberation. In that respect, the work that the cultural workers from NAM countries were doing was a continuation of other, earlier cultural projects tied to political struggles.Footnote 3
I theorize this type of cultural work within the context of what has been described as “nonaligned modernism”Footnote 4 because its products (artworks, films, literature, music, exhibitions, festivals, etc.) had both political underpinnings, closely related to the general goals of NAM doctrines, and varied cultural and aesthetic goals closely connected to politics: many were motivated by the greater goal of national liberation (for example, Algeria or Angola to name just two), or they used culture as a way of liberating national and international culture from the dominance of the West. This modernism was therefore a form of making space for alternative aesthetic ideas which closely intersected with political struggles and advocacy for changing cultural and artistic institutions. In its formal qualities, the types of practices encompassed within the theoretical model varied as different forms of aesthetic modalities developed over time: from socialist realism to nonrepresentational and abstract tendencies in painting, sculpture, and print, from traditional and indigenous architecture to brutalism, or from folklore to jazz and classical music. While its formal characteristics differed, its content was clearly enunciated—artists were focused mostly on political themes which were expressed in depictions of decolonial struggles, socialist ideas, and gender and racial equality, or imbedded in theoretical manifestos by artists and art groups which extoled the creation of national culture and independence through cultural means. Some examples of this were artists such as the Mexican-American printmaker Elizabeth Catlett, Mexican painter Sarah Jiménez, Yugoslav sculptor August Augustinčić, Cuban painter Wifedo Lam, and Iraq’s New Vision Group. However, within the limited scope of this particular article, the theoretical model of nonaligned modernism is important because of its interconnectedness to institutional needs—the building of national cultural institutions and parallel transnational cultural infrastructure. It therefore cannot be divorced from the material contexts of making art (exhibitions, festivals, policies governing international culture, etc.) and its aesthetic, ideological, and material goals are important aspect of its overall functioning. In other words, it is important to analyze both aesthetic and material aspects of nonaligned modernism, however, here, I will limit my analysis to material and infrastructural needs related to NAM cultural diplomacy. While in my work I mostly explore nonaligned modernism through the example of Yugoslav culture and art in relationship to other NAM members, the term itself is not the only one that depicts such cultural forms. Artistic and cultural historians have used other terms to define such alternative modernisms outside of the West and the one used here provides one piece of a larger network that was in place in the non-Western world of the later 20th century.Footnote 5 By no means is the term nonaligned modernism singular, but rather, it brings to the table one of the ways in which modernist art and culture intersected with political contexts in the countries of the Global South and the socialist world.
The cultural histories of the nonaligned have been nearly forgotten after the 1989 shift in the global power dynamics after the Cold War, but are being reassessed by scholars in various fields. The systemic erasure of NAM cultural ties was also due to the movement’s political nature, perceived by the Western and former Soviet-Bloc political powerbrokers as potentially problematic in its offer of a “third way.”Footnote 6 The recuperation of the NAM’s cultural histories is paramount for filling in an important gap in the historiographies of the global Cold War. Yugoslavia’s multilayered involvement with the NAM has been systematically taken out of the post-socialist histories,Footnote 7 and as a result, the record of what Yugoslavia did for NAM cultural advocacy is of particular interest in this article. Here, I trace a general trajectory of some Yugoslav efforts to actively participate in creating transnational culture, which took place mostly through bilateral agreements that Yugoslavia had with all the NAM member states, which were also determining the structure and planning of various cultural events such as exhibitions, artists visits, symposia, art residencies, education, etc.
The Not So Curious Case of Yugoslavia
One final point should be made about Yugoslavia’s position within the movement. Unfortunately, it is one of the three nations within the movement from Europe. In spite of its long and distinguished record as a nation that has provided material support in the war against racism and wars for national liberation, many new members of the non-aligned movement have erroneously tried to lump it with the rest of Europe. (Singham Reference Singham1980, 26)
Archie Singham encapsulates some of the mixed attitudes vis-à-vis Yugoslavia’s active involvement with building the NAM. Singham emphasized country’s material, political, and ideological support for the NAM, highlighting crucial contributions Yugoslavs made to the movement. The question remains, however, why did Yugoslavia commit to building nonalignment in the first place? Once material history of the period is analyzed, we see that Yugoslavia’s participation in the formation of the NAM, and the associated economic and political fora, was a conscious, planned strategy that was a direct outcome of Yugoslavia’s own history with colonialism and its experiences in the Second World War.Footnote 8 These events and histories had a deep impact on the country’s trajectory after the war, shaping the ways in which Yugoslavia forged ahead, especially the strategies it used to negotiate its rather precarious geopolitical place in the world. The tense postwar international situation made it necessary for the Yugoslavs to employ a strategy of cooperation, solidarity, and negotiation in order to survive. Consequently, they embarked on forging diplomatic links with various non-Western and Western countries. This strategy of signing strategic economic and cultural bilateral agreements with all sides in the brewing Cold War became a staple of Yugoslavia’s pragmatic nonaligned diplomacy. It would also become one of the primary ways in which Yugoslavia attempted to engage with the world and build some of its primary alliances—most importantly within the Non-Aligned Movement. Between the early 1950s and the end of the 1980s, Yugoslavia signed hundreds of bilateral agreements with its nonaligned partners and other non-Western countries. These agreements covered many aspects of political, economic, and cultural cooperation. Over the years, and especially after the break with the Soviet Union, culture became a key feature in Yugoslavia’s new international nonaligned strategy, thereby constructing a form of nonaligned modernity which found its footing within vigorous cultural exchange. The examples of cultural diplomacy discussed in this article depict Yugoslavia’s new activist approach to cultural diplomacy, thereby theorizing and historicizing the meaning of nonaligned culture in broader terms. Yugoslavia’s cultural exchange offers a glimpse into the dynamic cooperation at the highest level between nonaligned nations, showing how small countries used culture as one of the means to fight Western colonial rule, and new forms of postwar cultural imperialism.Footnote 9 Analysis of the Yugoslav archival documents from the period show the complex ways in which the country collaborated with various NAM countries, and how these developing countries offered assistance and support to each other. This article therefore offers a broader materialist analysis of nonaligned cultural history, of its historical roots and precedents in Yugoslavia, recovering Yugoslavia’s role in, and contribution to, the twentieth-century cultural and political struggles for sovereignty and political agency. At the same time, it intervenes in some long-standing and some more recent arguments around the NAM and its legacy, and Yugoslavia’s place within it. The first set of such arguments mounts a broader critique of nonalignment, positing that it needs to be understood as a problematic top-down (quasi-democratic) post-colonial liberation project, that simply served as a pretence for dictators to usurp its ideals and networks in order to maintain political power or to claim agency and visibility where there was none.Footnote 10 A second set of arguments is more focused on Yugoslavia, positing that its involvement in the NAM was flawed and largely misrepresented project, whereby Yugoslavia nominally declared its allegiance to its NAM allies, and support of post-colonial, anti-imperialist politics, but in reality the Movement served Yugoslav officials to overstate the country’s role in world affairs, and overestimate its commitment to post-colonial politics. According to this second set of arguments, not only did Yugoslavia conveniently use the NAM to its own benefit, but in dealing with its partners, it further supported Western white supremacy (Subotić and Vučetić Reference Subotić and Vučetić2017).
Contrary to such arguments, the material historical analysis of the nonaligned project as a whole, and of Yugoslav involvement with it in particular, offers an entirely different perspective. Indeed, the NAM was a statist project, but the new states which arose from diverse liberation movements could assert their political agency for the first time in modern history, and were doing so in the light of their struggles for independence. Discrediting the Movement on the basis of its adherence to the political structure of the state also denies agency to the project of the post-colonial state-building which came as a direct result of the legacy of colonialism. In other words, newly-freed countries were forced to adopt the statist model because that was the imposed international order.Footnote 11 Secondly, while it was indeed a way for Yugoslavia to find its own footing in the treacherous world of Cold War geopolitics, the initial impetus for seeking non-Western politically progressive allies came from Yugoslavia’s own history of revolutionary struggle for independence both prior to, and during WWII. This article therefore brings to the fore the rich and complex cultural history of NAM cooperation and Yugoslavia’s role in it. By uncovering its material histories, it analyzes the range of effectual outcomes this had on building an alternative transcultural network that was rooted in nonaligned modernity.
Articulating Yugoslav Nonaligned Cultural Policy
The socialist-leaning policies and advocacy of the NAM created a sort of anti-imperialist transnationalism in material terms, consisting of alternative economic networks, support in international diplomatic negotiations, exchange of experts, and symbolic presence via cultural diplomacy and savvy use of an increasingly globalized media. In fact, “as the insistence on independence from superpowers and the promotion of the interests of decolonizing countries drew the ire of the western bloc, such nonaligned efforts drew critical attention and inspired a generation of world-wide communities of intellectuals of African and Asian descent,” creating a transnational anticolonial material and symbolic network (von Eschen Reference Von Eschen, Immerman and Goedde2013, 459). Within the new structures of the NAM and its conferences, member states initiated a more systemic strategy of countering what Tran Van Dinh (Reference Dinh1976) called “cultural imperialism.” Highlighting Amilcar Cabral’s 1973 pronouncement that imperialist domination calls forth cultural revolution as well, Van Dinh (Reference Dinh1976, 40) focused on the importance of including cultural liberation into the NAM’s official policies. Cabral’s and Van Dinh’s point is salient as it linked political liberation with sustaining of one’s culture, and within that relationship formulating the NAM’s cultural strategy. Securing material support for cultural work was foundational to first of all creating institutions capable of nurturing culture, and secondly to articulating the products of culture that would in their aesthetic, formal and conceptual elements express decolonial national sentiment. Yugoslav diplomats, cultural workers, and politicians were deeply aware of the need to create and use culture as a form of resistance. Edvard Kardelj (Reference Kardelj1950, 71) made a similar link between political, economic and cultural interdependence in 1950 when he asked during his speech at the UN’s General Assembly, “should a nation subjected to economic aggression or fighting for its economic independence or striving to overcome its economic and cultural backwardness obtain the economic support of the United Nations?” The answer of course was a resounding yes, and culture was of equal importance for Kardelj. Further confirmation of the link between political, economic, and cultural agency came in 1952 as Vladislav Ribnikar, Yugoslav representative at UNESCO, spoke at UNESCO’s General Conference making the same parallel. He emphasized the importance of economic support for various member-states which would result in each country’s cultural development.Footnote 12 Other Yugoslav officials such as Marko Ristić, the head of the Yugoslav Committee for International Cultural Relations, called for cultural cooperation as the basis for peaceful coexistence. In 1951, he outlined a proto-nonaligned position, in which he foregrounded cultural diplomacy as a preeminent tool in nurturing new cultures of coexistence. He argued that “without international cooperation, coexistence is an empty slogan, a frivolous phrase,” and went on to state that understanding cannot exist without exchange, or what he called “cultural blood transfusion” (Ristić Reference Ristić1958, 253). Like Van Dinh, Cabral, and other nonaligned intellectuals, Ristić recognized that culture was intimately connected to the assertion of sovereignty and was a vital form of establishing understanding and collaboration between countries whose cultures are not represented in the international cultural landscape.
The history of socialist Yugoslavia’s cultural diplomacy, both prior to the Non-Aligned Movement and especially after its initiation, is a testament to the ways in which the Yugoslav leadership recognized the power of culture in regaining agency for those who were marginalized. Representatives of the Yugoslav cultural diplomatic core worked to buttress the political and diplomatic systems established within the NAM and actively to support anticolonial struggles through culture. Contrary to the criticisms which propose a false dichotomy between Yugoslavia’s politics and its stance on race,Footnote 13 an examination of the ways in which the Yugoslav experience of nonaligned cultural diplomacy might shed light on the Movement’s material structures and Yugoslav’s role in their strengthening. In fact, the Yugoslav state, its politicians, cultural workers, diplomats, and others, continually strove to establish connections with the allies beyond the West in order to create alternative political and cultural networks.
Yugoslavia steadily increased its cooperation with NAM countries, with a particularly vigorous exchange from 1961 onward. Material documentation of the exchange is found in the texts of cultural agreements, in memos of diplomatic meetings with various ambassadors and cultural representatives. From 1967 to 1975 Yugoslavia had a signed cultural agreement with more than twenty-five member states, as well as had numerous unofficial agreements. In a 1975 report on cultural cooperation with NAM countries, Yugoslav diplomat Aleksandar Demajo outlined the main three priorities in planning for future cooperation. He stated there was a need to further educate both Yugoslav officials and the general public about the cultural heritage and development of NAM countries, to use already established cultural events within Yugoslavia to further promote the nonaligned position, and finally to broaden the scope of conditions for informing NAM countries about Yugoslav culture.Footnote 14 Further in his report Demajo underlined the crucial relationship with UNESCO, which was the fourth element, or fourth pillar, of cultural work that Yugoslavia elaborated in its activism. In fact UNESCO, as was the case more broadly with the United Nations and its General Assembly, was a stepping stone and a partner in all NAM cultural activism. Nonaligned countries recognized early on that one of the ways to act internationally was through the work of UN. In fact the first unofficial nonaligned political action took place in 1951 during the Korean crisis, during which several future NAM countries led by India and Yugoslavia demanded that the crisis be dealt with in a peaceful way and that all sides return to the initial zones of demarcation (Mates Reference Mates1976). Already in the early 1950s, during this first real Cold War conflict, we see how the NAM engaged the power of UN as the representative of the international community.
UNESCO as the Key Partner of Nonaligned Culture
“In defending their independence and striving for equitable relations among nations,” stated Edvard Kardelj in Reference Kardelj1952, “the Yugoslav peoples are actually fighting for the conditions on which humanity’s progress depends, namely, for the right of each people to develop its creative forces without obstruction” (20). In a programmatic ending to the same speech, Kardelj (Reference Kardelj1952) outlined several diplomatic principles, one of which was to “support the comprehensive development of peaceable economic, political, and cultural cooperation among peoples” (33). These principles spell out the basic tenets of Yugoslavia’s approach to cultural diplomacy. Yugoslavia ratified the UN Charter in August 1945, subsequently signing more than twenty other UN-related charters, one of which was the UNESCO charter signed on March 31, 1950 (Jovanović Reference Jovanović1985, 19). Vladislav Ribnikar, then president of the Committee for Art and Culture, became a delegate to the UN in 1947 (Jovanović Reference Jovanović1985, 19) and to UNESCO in 1950 (UNESCO 1953). In February 1951, the Yugoslavs formed a national committee for UNESCO to coordinate the country’s advocacy abroad.Footnote 15 At first, Yugoslav delegates made connections and solicited educational and cultural funds and support, however, as early as 1951, Vladislav Ribnikar was calling for the use of culture in the promotion of peace, thus making a direct link between what Yugoslav delegations were doing in the General Assembly with the work of UNESCO. He reminded UNESCO’s General Assembly that “the only guiding criteria to decide on how to act” on cultural priorities should be peaceful coexistence.Footnote 16 In the decades to follow, Yugoslavia was able to contribute significantly to building UNESCO as an organization (including in regular financial contributions). One of the first such big undertakings, begun in 1960, was a project to save the monuments of Nubia. This was one of the first opportunities for Yugoslavia to help two of its major NAM allies. The Nubia Monuments Campaign, as it was sometimes called, was initiated at the request of the Egyptian and Sudanese governments in 1959, when the consequences of building the Aswan Dam threatened to destroy some of Africa’s oldest and most valuable cultural heritage sites (Mohamed Reference Mohamed1980, 7). This became the largest archeological project ever undertaken and was completed two decades later in 1980. Of the forty-five UNESCO members that participated, twelve were Western countries and thirty-three were either members of the NAM or other non-Western countries (notably, Soviet Bloc countries did not participate). The Yugoslav representative Branko Novaković signed the official agreement for a contribution of expertise and funds—the amount donated was the equivalent of $226,000 (US), which was a considerable amount for Yugoslavia at the time (UNESCO 1962). Of the participating non-Western countries, the highest donations came from India, Yugoslavia, and Cuba respectively, which of course reflected their close ties to Egypt (UNESCO 1963). A team of archeologists from the Yugoslav Institute for the Protection of Historic Monuments worked on the removal, transfer, and preservation of a number of frescos from the Coptic churches Abu Oda, Abdallah Nirqi, and Sheik Abd el Gadir (Medić Reference Medić1980, 45). As part of its funding and promotion commitment to the project, Yugoslavia also released a series of commemorative stamps in 1962 (UNESCO 1962). Separately from such concrete UNESCO-led projects, Yugoslavia also supported various ongoing initiatives, fundraising efforts, and actively participated in regular UNESCO meetings. Finally in 1980, it hosted the 21st General Conference of UNESCO in Belgrade, thus cementing its role as both a mediator and a cultural broker advocating collaboration. In fact, the NAM, countries of the Global South, and all those outside of the East-West conflict had attained a dominant position in UNESCO, and in the 1960s and ‘70s successfully enacted a number of changes in the operation of UN itself. Consequently, they were able to stir various international political, economic, and cultural processes to such a degree as to pose a serious threat to the influence of the US and other Western countries (Iacob Reference Iacob2015). Support and work within UNESCO was therefore key to establishing alternative cultural networks when it came to various forms of imperialism.
One-on-One Collaboration: Nonaligned Cultural Agreements and Exchange
Parallel to its advocacy in UNESCO, Yugoslavia pursued active state-to-state cultural exchange that evolved into a comprehensive strategy of cultural exchange with the nonaligned.Footnote 17 Between the 1950s and 1989, the country signed hundreds of bilateral cultural agreements with various countries. These agreements, and the many cultural events and activities that stemmed from them, shaped cultural diplomacy and had a significant impact on both Yugoslavia and its partners. Yugoslav cultural diplomacy relied a great deal on these cultural agreements in forging international cooperation; in many ways, their efficacy and success rested on a unique diplomatic strategy, which was based first and foremost on President Tito’s own personal diplomacy, or what Vladimir Petrović (Reference Petrović2014, 578) terms “summit diplomacy.”Footnote 18 Cultural diplomacy operated through a number of political bodies at the national and provincial levels. At first, cultural relations were delegated via the federal Committee for Art and Culture formed in 1946. In 1948, when it became clear that the work of the Committee would have to be far more complex than its initial, simple structure would permit, the organization was enlarged and reorganized into several subcommittees, or departments, one of which was the Department for International Cultural Relations (Hofman Reference Hofman2001, 46). Finally, in 1948 the Committee for Art and Culture and the Committee for Science and Education joined the Ministry of Culture and Science of Government of SFRY—what would become the primary body to handle all forms of international cultural diplomacy (Hofman Reference Hofman2001, 46). Even though the two committees joined the Ministry, they still existed within the larger body as separate entities. The Committee’s first, and most influential, head was Marko Ristić, under whose influence the Committee for Art and Culture opened up to the world, bringing many international artists to Yugoslavia, ultimately ushering in a modernist ethos that would shape the formation of nonaligned modernism. Significantly, Ristić was a prewar Surrealist poet, journalist, and literary critic, and was involved with the most prominent debates on the role of art in Yugoslav revolutionary politics.Footnote 19 His stance on the role of art and aesthetic in political struggle was significant and contributed to the opening up of the Yugoslav cultural space to broader and vanguard positions.Footnote 20 After the war, Ristić became a diplomat and ultimately spearheaded various Yugoslav cultural institutions. Through Ristić’s guidance as the head of the Committee, Yugoslavia reached out to various countries to sign agreements on cultural cooperation. Initial work was limited.
At first, between 1945 and the early 1950s, a majority of the signed documents were with the neighbouring countries of the Soviet Bloc, and with the United States, the UK, and France. However, following President Tito’s 1955 journey to Asia, new connections were initiated. After 1955, the first student-exchange contracts were signed with India and Burma, and Indian and Burmese students arrived to study in Yugoslavia. Starting in the mid 1950s, there is a marked increase in agreements with countries that would later join the nonaligned camp, such as Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Ethiopia, and India, among many others. These agreements led to different levels of cooperation and engagement: opportunities for the education of foreign students in Yugoslavia; the exchange of expert and technical personnel; the importation and exchange of film, books, and music; art exhibitions, music and dance performances, literary festivals, and so on. On occasion, the contracts listed specific names of experts, lecturers, artists, or events, but often they mentioned important international manifestations, such as, for example, the Ljubljana Biennale and the Alexandria Biennale, which in the 1960s became well-known international artistic events that were attractive enough to warrant reciprocal agreements with important partners such as India. Finally, the contracts spelled out the logistic and financial side of cultural exchange, which in some cases became a stumbling block.Footnote 21
Logistics and financials provide a picture of how Yugoslavia chose to support its nonaligned partners. For example, it provided India with much less financial support in terms of student scholarships and stipends,Footnote 22 but was more generous with NAM countries that were financially less stable. Dragomir Bondžić (Reference Bondžić2014, 646) argues that in its willingness to support student refugees from African states which were still fighting against the colonial rule (such as, for example Kenya, Rhodesia, Mali, or Senegal) the Yugoslavs allowed immediate admission to universities and issued visas without any proper documents, transcripts, or identification papers. The viability of this open policy was shaky at first. Bondžić’s (Reference Bondžić2014, 645) analysis shows that in the early 1950s, when Yugoslavia first started to exchange its educators and technical personnel (initially with India and Burma), the number of students and postgraduates interested in coming to the country was very small—between three and ten students a year. However, following the first NAM Conference in 1961, the numbers picked up considerably; in the 1960s and 1970s foreign students represented about one percent of the overall student population (Bondžić Reference Bondžić2014, 645). In the mid 1960s financial infrastructure for supporting cultural exchange became clearer. For example, in the 1968 bilateral agreement with the United Arab Republic (later Egypt), each side was taking on a part of the financial burden for travel and organization of events. For example, if a film worker was to be sent to a festival in Yugoslavia, the UAR would pay for their trip, while Yugoslav side would pay for their stay and incidentals while at the festival. Cultural centers, festivals, and other similar events organized to promote the culture of either Yugoslavia or UAR would be able to import films, magazines, books, etc. free of duties and taxes, and in some cases would receive support from the host country. Similar wording is found in cultural agreements with India, Iraq, and Ethiopia. Yugoslavia also regularly subsidized cultural exports from smaller and developing countries. What this history shows is that as the transnational exchanges became more structured and organized, and as the numbers of students, professionals, cultural workers, and cultural products increased, the more ubiquitous the network became.
Nonalignment Exhibited
The language of nonaligned transculturalism, and of nonaligned modernism in its material aspects, also emerges from a closer analysis of the archival documentation pertaining to bilateral agreements in terms of art exhibits. Between the early 1950s and end of the 1980s, the Yugoslav Commission for Foreign Cultural Relations helped organize, promote, and/or fund hundreds of individual and group exhibitions of Yugoslav artists’ work internationally, and international artists who came to present their work in Yugoslavia. The contracts signed with the NAM and other countries narrate a story of a rich and varied exchange through art. Each bilateral agreement signed had a specific section dedicated to visual arts, usually mentioning large festivals and exhibitions. The range of exhibitions was quite wide—small two- and three-person exhibitions, solo exhibitions, and large-scale travelling exhibitions were all included in the language of the agreements. My research of the exhibitions organized indicates that between 1952 and 1987 Yugoslavia has sponsored and helped organize more than 60 various exhibitions of Yugoslav artists in non-Western countries (such as Mexico, Algeria, Cuba, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Kenya etc.).Footnote 23 Many of these exhibitions, such as for example “Contemporary Art from Yugoslavia,” (touring New Zealand and Philippines 1978–79) or “Contemporary Yugoslav Print/Graphic Arts” (touring between 1966–68 across South and Central America, the Middle East, and North Africa) had 60 or more artists and 100 or more works of art. This number increases when we include Yugoslavia’s regular participation at the major biennales and triennials. Of these events, the majority were large-scale group exhibitions which required a great deal of logistical and financial support. Financial support was complex in nature, as local and provincial governments (as well as federal) and their cultural commissions would negotiate the structure of financial deals. As Yugoslav sociologist Stevan Majstorović stated in his 1972 UNESCO report on culture, this decentralized financial support system meant that everything took longer, and that there was a lot of mediation in order to navigate between the various committees, levels of government, and expert panels (Reference Majstorović1972, 46). Despite the problems and pitfalls embedded in such a complicated system, he noted that it did contribute to a great expansion of cultural exchange.
The diversity of representation and participation is revealed on closer inspection of the artists and the exhibitions. Yugoslav artists were regular participants at various international biennales and triennials in the Global South, the most important of which were Alexandria Biennale, São Paulo Biennale, and Triennale-India. Yugoslavs participated in the first Alexandria Biennale in 1955 with a large contingent of twenty-five artists and more than fifty artworks, continuing to represent the country in the following decades. Alexandria represented the trusted partner as Yugoslav artists regularly presented their work there; almost every cultural contract between Yugoslavia and Egypt contained references to Alexandria and, in return, Egyptian artists presented at the Ljubljana Biennale. Similar numbers were regularly present at the São Paulo Biennale, fluctuating over the years between five and ten artists (VI Bienal 1961). Other group shows were organized starting in the early 1950s. A smaller exhibition of contemporary Yugoslav painters was sent to New Delhi in 1957, as well as shows in Egypt and South Africa.Footnote 24 Through a reciprocal arrangement with India, there were two large exhibitions of Indian art and architecture organized in Yugoslavia in 1961—an exhibition of architectural photography and a Rabindranath Tagore retrospective. Subsequently after several other successful exhibitions, Yugoslav painter Petar Lubarda went for a three-month-long research and residency trip to India where he had an exhibition in 1964.Footnote 25 The following year the painter Zlatko Prica also visited India on a residency. Yugoslav artists also regularly exhibited work at the Indian Triennial of art, with 24 pieces in 1975. In 1967, a group exhibition of prints was organized in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, and Slavko Tihec presented his sculptures at the Triennale of Modern Art in New Delhi.Footnote 26 The trend continued in the 1970s with an almost exponential growth in the number of travelling art exhibitions. The first of several exhibitions of Yugoslav art in Algeria was in 1970. In 1974 the two countries exchanged two large exhibitions—the Yugoslav side organized People’s War of Liberation in the Work of Yugoslav Artists, and the Algerian side sent an exhibition of design and craft and contemporary Algerian painting. These two exhibitions stand as an example of the pragmatic understanding of art in its role as a symbolic representation of politics. On the Algerian side, the art representing a battle against a much stronger fascist enemy spoke to the similar kind of struggle that the Algerian people went through in their war of independence. In return, the Yugoslav side was hungry for new knowledge about their NAM allies and wanted to educate the public about what was happening in countries outside of the Western cultural realm. These sentiments are present in all the reports that the Yugoslav diplomats wrote and the conversations that they had with their counterparts abroad. The decade of the 1970s was also busy in terms of individual artists travelling to various symposia, residencies, and artist colonies in nonaligned countries. Bosnian painter Safet Zec had a solo show at the Museum of Art of Rabat in Morocco in 1973, partially as a result of one of the cultural exchange trips that he had made earlier. Following his success, an exhibition of Bosnia and Herzegovina painting was organized in Morocco in 1976 as well.
Numerous non-Western artists were regularly visiting Yugoslavia and the few mentioned below are just a small sampling. Some of the earliest representatives were Mexican artists, as Mexico and Yugoslavia first established official cultural ties in the late 1940s. Initial exchanges were mostly of books, films, and especially music, but in 1958 an exhibition of Mexican architecture was brought first to Belgrade and then toured several other cities.Footnote 27 In 1966 David Alfaro Siqueiros visited Yugoslavia, and in 1968 Rufino Tamayo, both as part of the cultural exchange. Nonaligned artists also started visiting, especially in the mid 1960s. In 1964, an exhibition of Ethiopian art was organized in Belgrade and travelled to Zagreb and Ljubljana. Perhaps the most ambitious exhibition to travel to Yugoslavia came from Senegal in 1965 and represented a survey of Senegal, Mali, and Guinea (Korov Reference Korov and Roksandić2017, 144). The organization of the exhibition was a joint effort between Yugoslav museums, the Embassy of the Republic of Senegal, Mali and Guinea, and the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) (Korov Reference Korov and Roksandić2017, 144). In 1968 “The Treasures of Cyprus” was brought to Belgrade, and in 1971 an exhibition of contemporary painters from Cyprus was organized. The United Arab Republic sent an exhibition of contemporary ceramic in 1968, and the work of one of Egypt’s preeminent modernist painters Mohammed Seif al-Din Wanly in 1969. NAM artists were also regularly and prominently represented at various exhibitions of the so-called naïve or folk art that were often organized in Yugoslavia. In fact, this part of the NAM exchange was probably the most popular as the Museum of Naïve Art in Zagreb became one of the foremost institutions to organize temporary exhibits of international folk and naïve art. In the 1970s, the exhibitions continued along with visits by artists to art colonies and residencies—especially popular were art colonies in Počitelj, Strumica, and Prilep, all of which featured prominently in almost every contract with a number of countries.
Of the many exhibitions mentioned above, the largest and longest-running cultural event to promote NAM art was/is the Ljubljana Biennale. Established in 1955, the Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts is one of the oldest of its kind in the world, initiated in the same year as the Alexandria Biennale and documenta in Kassel. Its key mandate during the socialist era was to showcase artists from non-Western (eventually nonaligned) countries and the promotion of Yugoslavia’s role in the internationalization of modern art, inclusiveness, cultural cooperation, and peaceful co-existence. An art critic from Croatian daily Novi List highlighted some of these characteristics, noting in a 1967 review that “an international exhibition of such calibre can be organized either by only inviting the best and most famous artistic names in contemporary graphic arts, or as an inclusive exhibition of everything that is sincere and good in the art world without worrying about how famous the artists are,” and adding, “the biennale in Ljubljana represents the meeting of East and West, of farthest corners of the world and farthest stylistic interests,” making it a most cordial and spontaneous event (Novi List, July 9, 1967). The Ljubljana Biennale is therefore an example of the ways in which nonaligned policies and doctrines were negotiated and implemented concretely in cultural practice, especially when analyzing its curatorial policies. There was a direct connection between political and cultural discourses, showing their interaction and interdependence and the crucial role of art and culture in influencing public discourse. The Ljubljana Biennale’s curatorial, organizational, and diplomatic operations were meant to challenge and decenter the still dominant art historical narrative that continues to qualify modernism as a largely Western phenomenon with minority versions existing only in the margins—something that non-Western intellectuals argued was part and parcel of Western imperialist policies. As the history of the Ljubljana Biennale suggests, nonaligned modernism and its counterparts across the non-Western world were constituted within multiple geopolitical and cultural programs that continuously presented counter-narratives to the dominant cultural discourses. More importantly, these varied transcultural forms—and their collaboration and exchange—were parallel to the Western mainstream and formed a basis for writing an alternative history of culture.
Here of particular interest will be highlighting the process of selecting and curating artists, as well as the heterogeneity of work during the Biennale’s history, all of which provides insight into why the exhibition is representative of how NAM transnational cultural diplomacy and aesthetics were built. Organized and curated by Slovene curator Zoran Kržišnik, a well-connected and savvy cultural manager, the Biennale would quickly rise to become one of the most diverse international exhibitions of its time. The first Biennale had a predominantly Western group of representatives from France, the United States, Spain, and the UK, among others. However, in keeping with the idea of reaching out to both the East and the West, there were artists from the Soviet Union and China, as well as Turkey, Korea, and Japan. Archival documentation also shows that letters of invitation were sent to artists from India, Egypt, and Mexico, but they never responded and ultimately never participated. Over the years, in interviews Kržišnik stated that he had to carefully negotiate how he would curate artists from specific countries. For example, while he was able to handpick artists from the majority of the countries in Europe, the Americas, and Africa, he left the selection of the Soviet and Chinese artists to their own cultural institutions and hoped for the best (Start, October 22, 1975). In other words, knowing that state officials in the two countries had to vet who was politically suitable took precedence over choosing the most qualified artists. This careful negotiation was an example of how Biennale organizers deliberately rejected the traditional standards of a high modernist formalist approach to curating for full participation.Footnote 28
The inclusiveness and openness of the organizers was recognized both by the artists who participated, but also by the Yugoslav state officials who increasingly invested funds to support the development of the Biennale. As the exhibition garnered respect across the world, the Yugoslav state strategically used the Biennale as a way to support NAM culture. In many of the bi-lateral cultural agreements signed, the Biennale features as an important cultural event to which various countries were invited to present. In formal meetings between ambassadors and foreign visitors from various Asian, African, and Latin American countries, the question of Ljubljana comes up as a place where cultural ideals of NAM were upheld. And while Zoran Kržišnik, Biennale’s long-time director, did not at first seek to deliberately showcase NAM countries, he quickly recognized the meaning and importance of doing so in the years to come. As with all the other Yugoslav cultural workers, Biennale organizers understood that Yugoslav art lay at the crossroads which opened an opportunity to serve as a bridge for, as Marko Ristić put it, cultural co-existence.
In contrast to the first exhibition which featured fewer artists from the African and Asian continents, subsequent Biennales were marked by an increase in the number of artists from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The first Biennale presented 158 artists, with 55 from Yugoslavia and non-Western countries (Organizacijski odbor 1955). In 1957 there were 255 artists, and of those, 77 were Yugoslav and other non-Western artists, whereas in 1961 the number of artists more than doubled to 331 with around 140 from non-Western countries, including Egypt, India, Turkey, Japan, and Mexico, among others (Kržišnik Reference Kržišnik1957). These numbers further continued to climb, and in 1977 artists from Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin/Central American, and Eastern European countries (many of whom were people of color) comprised the majority of the Biennale numbering 70 percent (Jerman Reference Jerman1977). Equally important was the representation of women, which grew from around 30 in the first several exhibitions to more than 75 in 1977, representing around 18 percent of artists.Footnote 29
The diversity of the artists was also reflected in the formal range of artistic styles within the discipline of printmaking. This was one of the more contested issues for which the Biennale was criticized in the 1970s. As already noted, Kržišnik and the organizing committee curated artists from certain countries (usually Western) via a standard invitational process,Footnote 30 when necessary leaving their curatorial choices to various state organizations, as some states had complete ownership over which artists were allowed to participate (this was mostly the case with countries from the Eastern Bloc). Consequently, such countries for the most part pre-selected artists—often based on political suitability—leaving some art critics, such as Josip Depolo, confused with respect to the overall coherency of the exhibition’s concept. This was reflected in his assessment of the East European galleries at the 1957 Biennale.
An instructive example for us are the East European exhibitors, whose art is still developing along the lines of dead, official schemas. And here again we can single out the example of Poland, which has begun to distinguish itself in painting, yet the visual language of the exhibitor in this gallery [Polish] was used exactly a hundred years ago. Now, let us assume that the painters in these countries sacrificed their artistic expression in the name of “clarity” “distinctness” and concepts, meaning, they would at least have to be progressive and combative with their subject-matter. Instead, what do we see? It is in their subject-matter, that the most entrenched European petit bourgeois would delight. When these artists are not escaping into historicism, they are painting saccharine landscapes, empty still lives, stylized folklore, or flowers. (Depolo Reference Depolo1957)
The heterogeneity of artworks, however, did not necessarily work against the Biennale, rather it speaks to the organizers’ commitment to equity in representation, something that Josip Depolo admitted was the Biennale’s strength. Co-existence of a variety of aesthetic approaches and artistic styles, dialogue between the reigning modernist language of abstraction (such as in the works of l’Ecole de Paris and Abstract Expressionists, or Pop Art), and the more political aesthetic that was either not representational, or was semi-representational (such as in the case of Mexican and some Yugoslav art), represented the very heart of the Biennale. It is precisely in this juxtaposition and aesthetic heterogeneity that nonaligned modernism is formally most vividly articulated, and organizers’ commitment to promote not only non-Western cultures, but also to counter hegemonic aesthetic attitudes in which all figurative work was deemed less advanced or culturally backward, is shown.Footnote 31 Modernist purity of the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by its seemingly apolitical stance and commitment to formal and phenomenological explorations—exemplified in prints of artists Jean Lurcat, Gustav Signier, Berto Lardera, Zoran Mušič, and others—was directly challenged by the more oblique aesthetic styles of non-Western artists such as Leopoldo Mendez, Rufino Tamayo, Vasso Katrakis, Zlatko Bourek, and Menhat Allah Helmy, as well as Elizabeth Catlett, who used both abstraction (or nonrepresentational approaches) and realism, fluidly passing from one to the other. Such prints explore themes of political agency, decolonization, and depict scenes of everyday life, or use indigenous mythology and its relationship to contemporary art. Ljubljana Biennale worked hard towards opening up the world stage to younger artists (something that Kržišnik adamantly defended), often artists who did not have access to large international artistic events, and artists who were not creating art that conformed to the current popular trends in art. And while the resulting exhibitions were perhaps of varied quality and aesthetic approaches, they were a truer representation of the aesthetic, social, cultural, and political aspirations that existed across the world of the time.
Conclusion
As I have attempted to document in this text, Yugoslavia’s role in building and supporting the Non-Aligned Movement was not only political but cultural in nature. Along with cultural workers from the Global South and its NAM partners, Yugoslavs recognized that the anti-imperialist struggle needed to be multi-dimensional, including political agency, economic sovereignty, and cultural independence in order to create a counter balance to Cold War tensions. Cultural diplomacy negotiated through various treaties and international agreements was only one part of this equation. The other part was visible representations of NAM cultures which were to counter the ways in which various member-states were misrepresented in the West. These visible representations had a political purpose, and therefore the art and culture represented as part of these efforts was always politically engaged. The political engagement, either in the very form of art and its narratives, or through cultural organizing, or forms of curatorial activism (as was the case for example with the Ljubljana Biennale), were all in contrast to Western forms of art and culture, which purported to be “neutral” and removed from the political realm. In the case of the nonaligned there was a concerted effort to suffuse art with the political in order to call attention to forms of imperialism. In his famous speech at the Lincoln University in 1972, Amilcar Cabral (Reference Cabral1973) wrote that “certainly, imperialist domination calls forth cultural oppression and attempts, either directly or indirectly, to do away with the most important element of culture of the subject people,” adding “but the people are only able to create and develop the liberation movement because they keep their culture alive despite the continual and organized repression of their cultural life and because they continue to resist culturally” (60). This understanding, that culture was not only an intellectual or creative product, but in fact the very heart of political struggle, is what we see as the guiding force behind nonaligned cultural work. Certainly, Yugoslavs recognized this and worked through NAM structures, but also through UNESCO and the UN to fund, organize, and represent Yugoslav and other cultures.
The products of this transnational cooperation were reflected concretely through state funding of various cultural events and exhibitions, through building new forms of architecture, and through more ephemeral forms of public art, as well as popular forms of culture, such as exhibitions of folk art, various multidisciplinary festivals such as The First World Festival of Negro Arts, or the Ljubljana Biennale. These cultural and political forms constituted an affectiveFootnote 32 international and national consciousness, or a nonaligned “imagined community” (Anderson Reference Anderson1991, 1–9), a parallel transnational community which attempted, through its cultural advocacy, to create what Tran Van Dinh called an alternative to the hegemonical cultural structures which existed at that time.
Disclosure
This is to acknowledge that the author does not have any financial interest or benefit from the direct applications of this research.
