Art Against the Anti-Communist Imperative: Chto Delat, Yevgeniy Fiks, and Elena Chemerska at the Limits of Social Practice Art

Abstract

This dissertation follows the ways in which Russian performance art collective Chto Delat, Russian-American conceptual artist and Yevgeniy Fiks, and North Macedonian multimedia artist Elena Chemerska allude to the Soviet and Yugoslav past, and Communist internationalism more broadly, in their work. Using Chto Delat’s Rosa House of Culture, Fiks’ Pleshkas of the Revolution and Chemerska’s Fatherland as anchor points, this dissertation examines the ways in which these critique the effects of capitalist transition in the Russian Federation and Yugoslavia by imitating or invoking official, state socialist cultural infrastructures and art production. In doing so, these artistic practices defy stubborn Cold War, anti-Communist attitudes that persist in the context of contemporary art criticism and exhibitions, even as their work invites questions as to the origins and efficacy of art activism and “social practice art,” two common, late-20th and early-21st century models of artistic engagement in progressive politics.