Empowering Aesthetics: Contemporary Art from Post-Socialist Central Europe (Radical Aesthetics-Radical Art)

The artistic strategies explored in this book are essential tools in fostering emancipatory consciousness in marginalized communities.Empowering Aesthetics weaves together case studies from the post-socialist Central European region (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) to show how art can provide critical support to gender, sexual and racialized groups.The empowering aesthetics employed by the artists in this book are not only urgent and critical, but also vitally personal, each chapter building a clear understanding of what social equality looks like in these specific political and geographic contexts.These practices are a response to the rise of nationalism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia in the region.Engaging with contemporary philosophy and feminist, queer and decolonial (art) theory (Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, Angela Dimitrakaki, Boris Groys, Jack Halberstam, Grant Kester, Ewa Majewska, Paul B.Preciado, Legacy Russell, Madina Tlostanova, etc.), this book h