Online Seminar Series “Socialist Visual Cultures and Decolonization: Circulations, (Re)interpretations, and Resistances of Visual Models in the Context of the Cold War”
Host: Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA, Paris)
Organizers: Coline Perron, Sasha Artamonova, Gaëlle Prodhon, Jade Thau
This five-part seminar examines how visual cultures at the intersection of socialism and decolonization reworked, circulated, and resisted socialist aesthetic models during the Cold War. By focusing on the production, circulation, and reception of images, it explores how postcolonial societies appropriated and transformed socialist visual languages to construct new national and transnational identities within “red globalization”.
All sessions take place 2–4 pm (CET) and are organized in a hybrid format (on-site at INHA, Paris, and online via Zoom).
In the middle of the twentieth century, in the context of the Cold War, various countries began to envision socialism as an alternative to colonial domination. The “new Cold War history” and the scholarship on “global socialism,” which developed in the wake of Odd Arne Westad’s work, have contributed to questioning the bipolar view of the world during this period by restoring agency to countries in the process of decolonization. Far from playing a passive role in the ideological conflict between the two “superpowers,” these countries sought to make their voices heard. Numerous attempts to establish a “third way,” both ideologically and politically, emerged, and several states adopted socialist regimes that maintained sometimes complex relations with the USSR (Algeria, Vietnam, Ethiopia, among others). These nations thus became part of a “Red globalization” (Sanchez-Sibony, 2014) and engaged in a wide range of exchanges—educational, military, economic, and cultural—within a socialist camp that was far from homogeneous, reflecting the persistence of North–South dynamics throughout the Cold War.
Within this dual context of the Cold War and decolonization, the cultural sphere—and particularly the visual arts— occupied a crucial place. Socialism offered powerful visual models associated with ideals of international solidarity, class struggle, and resistance to colonial, racist, and imperialist oppression. For countries in the process of decolonization, the production of images served as a way to defend a worldview opposed to that of the enemy and, at the same time, to promote their emerging national cultures. Situated at the crossroads of multiple cultures and civilizations, the images produced within these postcolonial societies not only reflected this historical turning point but also actively contributed to it. Analyzing the processes of production, circulation, and reception of these images provides a key tool for understanding the formation of postcolonial nation-states. It reveals the logics of appropriation and reinvention of socialist models while highlighting the exchanges between the “brother countries” of the Global South and the Socialist Bloc. These young nations did not simply adopt external models but actively participated in their redefinition, producing hybrid images that were both local and transnational. Such visual productions testify to how postcolonial states constructed their symbolic and visual identities while asserting cultural autonomy within the networks of socialist solidarity.
Cultural exchanges and diplomacy between Europe, the United States, and the so-called “Global South” have been examined in recent scholarly events—particularly in Europe (Germany, Finland, Austria, Romania, and elsewhere)—and by research groups working on Cold War studies. In France, however, this field of research remains less developed. More broadly, the notions of cultures, transfers, and visual models (such as Socialist Realism), which emerged at the intersection of decolonization processes and the ideological context of the Cold War, have not yet been sufficiently explored. In the postcolonial context, young nations sought to break away from the visual models imposed by colonization and from exogenous gazes, aiming instead to create representations rooted in their national identity. This reconfiguration of visual imaginaries unfolded as a process of symbolic and political re-appropriation. The encounter with socialism—which itself brought normative visual models and aesthetics of ideological mobilization—opened up a fertile space of hybridization. Yet, these exchanges were not without tension: decolonizing nations, eager to create their own visual identities, sometimes developed visual cultures that conflicted with the ideals of “Socialist Realism.” It thus becomes crucial to analyze how postcolonial nations appropriated, transformed, or subverted these socialist models to respond to their own needs for legitimacy, national unity, and cultural sovereignty. This interaction reveals unique processes of visual adaptation, in which art becomes a strategic tool of resistance, emancipation, and the reinvention of collective imaginaries.
This seminar, held over five sessions, aims to bring together emerging and established scholars working on the analysis of visual productions that emerged within these postcolonial societies in relation to various socialist contexts, adopting a comparative perspective. Beyond the iconographic and stylistic analysis of images—which form the main corpus of the presented research—the seminar will consider the entire process of production, from conception to dissemination and reception. This comprehensive approach will make it possible to examine the social practices and uses of images within their contexts, revealing the mechanisms of creation, mediation, and appropriation that contributed to the construction of visual imaginaries.
Seminar program
February 11, 2026
2 – 4 pm
Session 1: Presentation of the Seminar “Socialist Visual Cultures and Decolonization”
- Christina Kiaer (Northwestern University): “Socialist Axes of Exchange in Art History”
- Rado Ištok (National Gallery Prague): “Art in the Age of Solidarity: Czechoslovakia and the Global South in the Cold War”
- Vladislav Shapovalov (NABA Milan & HDK-Valand Göteborg): “Image Diplomacy: Legacy of Cold War Exhibitions in the Post-Cold War Continuum”
In person: salle Chastel, galerie Colbert, INHA,
2 rue Vivienne ou rue des Petits Champs, 75002 Paris
March 11, 2026
2 – 4 pm
Session 2: Socialist Internationalism and National Visual Identities in Postcolonial Contexts
moderated by Coline Perron
- Giulia Dickmans (Graduate School of Global Intellectual
- History, Freie Universität Berlin): “Tricontinental Solidarities: Cuban Angolan Cultural Relations Since the Cold War”
- Douglas Gabriel (University of Florida) and Adrienn Kácsor (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar): “Tough Love: Caricatures of a Socialist Friendship across Hungary and North Korea during the 1950s”
In person: salle Chastel, galerie Colbert, INHA,
2 rue Vivienne ou rue des Petits Champs, 75002 Paris
April 8, 2026
2 – 4 pm
Session 3: Forms, Constructions, and Performativities of Socialists Exoticisms moderated by Gaëlle Prodhon invited speakers:
- Perrine Val (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry): “Cinematographic Relationships Between the GDR and Its Arab and African Partners: The “Others” of the “Other” Germany?”
- Daniela Berghahn (University of London): “Post-socialist nostalgia and exoticism in The Road Home and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress”
In person: salle Chastel, galerie Colbert, INHA
2 rue Vivienne ou rue des Petits Champs, 75002 Paris
May 13, 2026
2 – 4 pm
Session 4: Women and the Politics of Emancipation in Socialist and Decolonial Contexts
moderated by Sasha Artamonova
- Christine Varga-Harris (Illinois State University): “Models of Decolonization and Female Emancipation: Women in Africa and South Asia vis-à-vis Soviet Women in the Visual Repertoire of Soviet Woman during the 1950s and 1960s”
- Nora Annesley Taylor ( School of the Art Institute of Chicago): “Mother, Worker, Hero: Socialist and PostSocialist Imaginings by Contemporary Vietnamese Women Artists”
In person: salle Brière, galerie Colbert, INHA
2 rue Vivienne ou rue des Petits Champs, 75002 P
June 10, 2026
2 – 4 pm
Session 5: Subverting Socialist Aesthetics: Oppositions and Appropriations of Socialist
Visual Models moderated by Jade Thau invited speakers:
- Bojana Videkanic (University of Waterloo): “Yugoslav People’s Art”
- Maria Mileeva (Courtauld Institute of Art): “Inji Efflatoun’s Socialist Friendship and Revolutionary Aesthetics”
In person: salle Brière, galerie Colbert, INHA
2 rue Vivienne ou rue des Petits Champs, 75002 P
*All times are in Central European Time (Paris, CET) ** In-person participation is limited and subject to availability.
https://invisu.cnrs.fr/2026/01/26/11-02-2026-cultures-visuelles-socialistes-s1-eng