Looking for a Third Way: Non-Aligned Politics of Art

Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37522/aaav.117.2025.301

Keywords:

Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), structural nostalgia vs. decolonial potential, art geographies, non-aligned art

Abstract

The text explores art practices and cultural politics that evolved within the framework of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), examining their contemporary relevance in art and curatorial research projects in the post-Yugoslav context. By reviewing instances of non-aligned art from pan-African, pan-Arab, Latin American, and Yugoslav perspectives, it traces their foundational concepts that continue to inform present-day exhibitions, artworks, and politically engaged discourses. These concepts are often approached dialectically, through a decolonial lens, within today’s global landscape of diverse positions and power dynamics. Drawing on feminist, materialist, and decolonial perspectives to explore the artistic geographies of this historical movement, the text highlights certain paradigmatic cases that reveal both the decolonial potential and the inherent structural nostalgia associated with the historical concept of a non-aligned world.

Author Biography

Jelena Petrović, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

PhD, completed her doctorate at ISH, Ljubljana Graduate School for the Humanities, in 2009. She subsequently taught and conducted research on gender-related interdisciplinary subjects at ISH until 2015. In 2011, she co-founded the feminist curatorial collective Red Min(e)d, with which she co-curated the Living Archive series (2011–2015) and the 54th October Salon in Belgrade (2013). From 2015 to 2017, Petrović held the position of Endowed Professor for Central and South Eastern European Art Histories at the Institute of Art Theory and Cultural Studies, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. She has since continued at the same institution as a senior researcher, leading the individual project The Politics of Belonging: Art Geographies (FWF Elise Richter Program 2019–2023).

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Published

22/11/2025

How to Cite

Petrović, J. (2025). Looking for a Third Way: Non-Aligned Politics of Art: Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis. Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis, (117), 168–229. https://doi.org/10.37522/aaav.117.2025.301

Issue

No. 117 (2025): Between Ideology and Imagination: African Art in Eastern Europe during the Cold War

Section

Articles

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Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.