‘Parallel Cultures’: Mail Art Magazines and Samizdat from the Eastern Bloc and Latin America, 1970-1995
Supervised by Dr Klara Kemp-Welch
Funded by AHRC/CHASE
My thesis focuses on mail art and samizdat practices from the 1970s to the mid-1990s, examining the networks of exchange that developed between the Eastern Bloc and Latin America, with a particular emphasis on Bulgaria, the USSR, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. Mail art emerged as a key counter-cultural practice during the 1960s as a means of avoiding state censorship, while samizdat developed for the clandestine distribution of literary and visual materials. By considering the role of such practices in the broader cultural resistance in Latin America and Eastern Europe, the research questions the ‘center/periphery’ binary, emphasizing multifocal artistic production. The primary points of interest include the effectiveness of the mail art network, the use of printmaking, the materiality of the magazines in informing experiences of censorship, and the relationship between word and image in the experimental poetry present in both types of publications.
Education
- PhD Candidate, The Courtauld Institute of Art (2023-present)
- MSt History of Art and Visual Culture, University of Oxford (2022-2023)
- MA Art History and Russian, University of St Andrews (2018-2022)
Research Interests
- Latin American and Latinx art
- Eastern European post-war art
- Global cultural exchanges during the Cold War
- Relationships between word and image
- Links between visual art and poetry
Papers & Talks
‘Beyond the Paradox of Language: Visual Poetry between Chile and Bulgaria’, Word and Image: Making Connections Across Different Disciplines and Across Institutions (The Courtauld Institute of Art, 7 June 2024)
‘A “White Fly” Crossing Space: Mirtha Dermisache’s Asemic Mail Art’, Women and Mail Art: Gendered Perspectives on Marginal Artistic Practices (Online, 11-25 Oct 2024)
Teaching
Teaching Assistant, The Courtauld Institute of Art: Summer University, 2024
