Gendered artistic positions and social voices

The history of women's art and gendered cultural practices has had a troubled record in Hungary as in many countries of East-Central Europe, and it mostly features as a missing phenomenon. This "lack" is often attributed on the one hand to state-socialist government policies that "emancipated" women at the same time as they hindered grass-roots social movements, including feminism, and on the other hand, to a re-traditionalizing social environment after the political changes of 1989. Beata Hock critically re-examines the supposed absences and presences of feminist cultural practice in Hungary with a focus on fine arts and cinema. The gendered dimensions of art production are explored in relation to larger social and cultural contexts in order to offer a uniquely interdisciplinary account.