Lecture by Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius

Vanishing Imageries of Europe’s East: Book Covers post 2020

Thursday, May 29, 2025, 12:00-1:15pm New York Time (find your time)

Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius (Birkbeck, University of London)

The war in Ukraine and the rising prominence of decolonisation as a central discourse have profoundly reshaped the textual and visual narratives associated with the region often referred to as "Eastern Europe." The traditional "cartographic logo" of the region has been supplanted by maps employed as tools of art activism, alongside a diverse array of regional cartographies. These new visualizations broaden our geographical understanding of Ukraine, East-Central Europe, the Baltics, the Balkans, and the Jewish diaspora. Simultaneously, the once-dominant communist symbols have largely been replaced by evocative photographs depicting everyday life "behind the Iron Curtain," showcasing jazz festivals, hippie movements, domestic cultures, and countercultures. Decolonisation, with its complex dualities—where the region alternates between the roles of "colonised" and "coloniser"—has yet to produce consistent visual equivalents. While familiar imagery tied to historical power asymmetries persists, the discourse increasingly embraces innovative and dynamic representations. These emerging visual elements resist straightforward interpretation, often eluding immediate identification with the region itself. This lecture seeks to navigate and interpret this ever-evolving epistemic landscape, making sense of its constant shifts and reemergences.

Dr. Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius has taught art history and visual culture at Birkbeck, University of London, and Humboldt University of Berlin. She has also served as Curator and Deputy Director of the National Museum in Warsaw. Her publications include Trionfo Barocco: Capolavori del Museo Nazionale di Varsavia e delle collezioni del Friuli-Venezia Giulia (Edizioni della Laguna, 1990, with Annalia Delneri); Borders in Art: Revisiting Kunstgeographie (Polish Academy, 2000); National Museum in Warsaw Guide: Galleries and Study Collections (2001); Jan Matejko’s Battle of Grunwald: New Approaches (The National Museum in Warsaw, 2010); Kantor was Here: Tadeusz Kantor in Britain (Black Dog, 2011, with Natalia Zarzecka); From Museum Critique to the Critical Museum (Ashgate, 2015, with Piotr Piotrowski); and Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe: Sarmatia Europea to Post-Communist Bloc (Routledge, 2021). Her current research focuses on caricature and its historiography.