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Art And Art Making as a Political Action in South Caucasus, Middle East, and The Balkans

Beral Madra

In this text, I will discuss art as political action in the context of contemporary art practices and in the context of Middle East, South Caucasus and the Balkans. In doing so, I will explore the parameters of mediation as well as the position of the artist within the socio-political and economic context of this region. Modernism placed the artist on the position of the mediator who was supposed to transmit the utopias through sublimated artworks and thereby to fulfill the expectations of modern societies. In 1985, Joseph Beuys, in a conversation with Yannis Kounellis, claimed that “we are here to built cathedrals” more...