Zuzana Štefková: Political? Socially Sensitive Issues in Central European Contemporary Art Practice

Zuzana Štefková is a curator at the Center of Contemporary Art at Prague and her concentration is in political art specifically in Czech Republic and Slovakia. Her presented works dealt with racism, sexism, corruption and social injustice in central Europe. She defined 'political art' in terms of post-social central Europe and it is an art that serves an ideological message. In central Europe political art has started as an honest way of portraying or reflecting what was going on rather than to have a political voice to it. She said that any art is 'political' since it's a production and evolutions depend on the heterogeneous social, economical and political powers. She also differentiated 'activist art' and 'political art' by saying that the motive of activists art is to motivate its audience from passively viewing or enjoying the art to active participatory audience. She presented several cases where political art was censored from the government one example being the work by Pode Bal Zimmer Frei 2002 where the officials censored the work because they were afraid that it would offend a certain group of ethnicity. She compared the two shows that she participated in curating in 2002 the and in 2006 and 2008 showing the differences and progression of political art throughout the years. In 2002, there was a strong idea in the society that art was helpless in that it could not influential the society and politics was more powerful over art. The show questioned the placement of the political art within the art world and the society. She also presented cases where the artists were arrested or went to court due to their performances or art pieces that the government felt threaten. However, even there are strong resistances to political art; there has been works that were accepted such as David Černý's work Pink Tank in 1991 where he painted the Soviet green tank into pink and later the veterans participated in the pointing and St. Wenceslas which is a statue of St. Wenceslas riding a dead horse upside down. She realized through his works that people don't get mad or critical as much if the work is poking fun at historical figures or issues whereas people are more sensitive to more recent political issues. She challenged and questioned the political art and artists in general if it was ever possible to be independent from the government or from funds that censor or have some control over what is shown in public. Looking through the political arts in central Europe, I was wondering where the boundaries were between vandalism/ breaking the law and art. Are artists responsible for their act of transgression or rebellious art? Where do ethics play in the process of making art?