Nonaligned Movement: Arts and Culture

Yugoslavia pursued its own socialist path in the realm of culture, too, exporting its production to the Global South to showcase its progress. Though the Nonaligned Movement lacked a policy on culture, cultural cooperation was part and parcel of decolonization and peaceful coexistence. In the process, a global network of cultural exchanges and a distinct version of modernism developed. 

With Bojana Piškur (Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana) and Ljiljana Kolešnik (Institute of Art History, Zagreb). Featuring music by Baligh Hamdi (Egypt) and Koudede (Algeria), courtesy of Sublime Frequencies. Part 4 of 7.

Listen: “Nonaligned Movement: Arts and Culture” (Episode #109)

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Transcript: “Nonaligned Movement: Arts and Culture” (Episode #109)

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[SOUNDBITE]

[JINGLE]

PETER KORCHNAK: This episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok. 

Yugoblok is a member-supported global community and information hub for all who remember Yugoslavia. 

It’s a social network, it’s podcasts (including an extended version of this episode and a members-only show), it’s articles, translations, newsletters, events, merch, and more—it’s all Yugoslavia, all the time. 

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Through membership contributions Yugoblokniks make this podcast and a whole lot more possible and open to all.

Visit Yugoblok.com to explore and join.

 [JINGLE]

PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, a Yugoblok show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your curator Peter Korchnak.

Yugoslavia’s struggle to develop its own socialism without outside interference included not just the political and economic realms but also culture. 

Already in 1952, Yugoslavia’s chief ideologue, Edvard Kardelj, said that, “In defending their independence and striving for equitable relations among nations the Yugoslav peoples are actually fighting for (…) the right of each people to develop its creative forces without obstruction.” One of Yugoslavia’s diplomatic principles was to quote, “support the comprehensive development of peaceable economic, political, and cultural cooperation among peoples.” 

As a result of international cultural cooperation, writes Bojana Videkanić, the Nonaligned Movement under Yugoslavia’s leadership quote “managed to create intriguing models of alternative cultural production which paralleled those of the Western world” and which “represent[ed] an important attempt to create new forms of culture.” And, according to Vuk Vuković, “culture emerged as a globalizing force that helped forge connections across vast spaces and geopolitical contexts.”

And so in today’s episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, the fourth in our series on nonalignment, we’ll focus on culture and cultural issues within the Nonaligned Movement. 

As every episode in the series, this one comes with an ad-free, extended version, featuring extra interview footage, stories, analysis, and music. These bonus extras are available exclusively to Yugoblok members. To get access and listen at Yugoblok or in your podcast listening app, go to yugoblok.com/join and sign up to be a Yugobloknik today. That’s yugoblok.com slash join.

[SOUNDBITE – “Noussa” by Baligh Hamdi] 

PETER KORCHNAK: That was “Noussa” by Baligh Hamdi from the album  Instrumental Modal Pop of 1970’s Egypt. This and all the other tracks in this episode are brought to you courtesy of Sublime Frequencies, a Seattle-based label “dedicated to exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers (…) not documented sufficiently enough by various communication channels.” Buy their music on Bandcamp! The links are at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia.

The Political Framework of Nonaligned Culture

PETER KORCHNAK: After the split with the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia promoted the United Nations as the foundation and guarantor of peace, self-determination, and cooperation. The UN was the forum where all countries had a vote in the General Assembly and where they could peacefully resolve any disputes. 

The Yugoslavs believed that culture was an important element in the promotion of peaceful coexistence. As early as 1950, Yugoslavia called for the strengthening of the United Nations and for peaceful economic, political, and cultural relations among nations on the basis of equality. 

The same year, Yugoslavia signed the charter of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO. Soon after, it established a special domestic commission to liaise with UNESCO and coordinate the country’s cultural work abroad. Yugoslavia then helped build up UNESCO with both regular financial contributions and participation in various projects. In one early project, in 1960, Yugoslavia assisted its nascent nonaligned allies, Egypt and Sudan, in the so-called Nubia Monuments Campaign, which saved and preserved cultural heritage sites threatened by the construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile. 

Over the decades, nonaligned countries came to dominate UNESCO and through it managed to change the workings of the UN itself. 

Within the Nonaligned Movement—

BOJANA PIŠKUR: Culture actually played quite a big role in the movement, even though it was never at the foreground at the conferences or at the summits.

PETER KORCHNAK: Bojana Piškur is a writer and curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana. Her research focuses on the linkages between politics and art, including in the Yugoslav self-management and the Nonaligned Movement.

BOJANA PIŠKUR: There were quite some mention[s] of culture on the second summit of nonalignment. This was in 1964 in Cairo, where the member countries discussed a lot and they said cultural equality was to be one of the important principles of the Movement. 

And then there was [the] summit in Algiers in ‘73, this was the fourth summit. And this summit, clearly saw the rise of more scientific analysis of cultural imperialism and a more specific strategy to resist it. 

And each of the later summits emphasized something else. For example, [the] Colombo summit in ‘76 emphasized restitutions, where also the members of the nonaligned countries, they asked, they called for the return of works of art to the countries from which they had been taken. 

PETER KORCHNAK: For the Nonaligned Movement, imperialist domination required not only political but also cultural liberation. The same applied to equality: countries had to be equal not just in the political realm but also in terms of culture. What Tran Van Dinh in 1976 labeled “cultural imperialism” required cultural decolonization. Culture was a form of resistance, which in turn had to be a global project, because only then could all former colonies recover their stolen cultural heritage. 

BOJANA PIŠKUR: There were at other conferences also mentioning struggle for decolonization in the field of culture and art, and also they asked specifically, for preservation of cultural heritage, also cultural cooperation among the nonaligned states, and so on.

PETER KORCHNAK: The late 1970s saw the adoption of more comprehensive steps, such as the Action Program for Cooperation in the Field of Culture and Education Among Non-Aligned Countries. 

The 7th summit, in 1983 in New Delhi, established the Nonaligned Movement’s own gallery in Titograd. More on that later in the show.

That said, the Nonaligned Movement did not have a cultural policy, according to Ljiljana Kolešnik, a researcher at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb.

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: There are, I believe, two reasons. The first one points to the motivation for establishment of the movement that was on the side of political politics, on the side of response to bipolar division of the world, and on the side of economic questions that remained the most important during the the entire period through which Yugoslavia was an active member in Nonaligned Movement. 

And the second one that was widely discussed at the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s, following the inclusion of culture among the developmental resources of [the] Global South—

PETER KORCHNAK: —as part of the Second United Nations Development Decade. The question before the Nonaligned Movement was—

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: Is the common cultural policy possible at all concerning different cultural traditions, different cultural heritage of a rather diverse group of nonaligned countries? 

And the standpoint of Yugoslav theorists included in those discussions was that something like a common cultural policy is impossible, impossible in a sense that it would be always to the certain extent exclusive.

PETER KORCHNAK: As Piškur writes, “the non-aligned transnational network…failed to produce a common fabric that would create a new international narrative in art. What did occur, however, was the potential to think…and create different histories…that extended beyond the prevailing Eurocentric ones.”

More on this later on in the extended episode.

For the Yugoslavs, culture was linked to sovereignty and a crucial element in understanding and cooperating with nonaligned countries. 

BOJANA PIŠKUR: Yugoslavia was quite specific, because immediately after the Second World War, of course, they realized the importance of art and culture, especially also in diplomatic relations with other countries, not necessarily only Nonaligned Movement. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Cooperation had three priorities: to educate Yugoslav officials and the public about the cultural heritage and development of nonaligned countries; to use cultural events to promote nonalignment within Yugoslavia; and to inform nonaligned countries about Yugoslav culture. 

Through the nonalignment work Yugoslavia then managed to develop not only alternative political networks but also cultural ones.

Yugoslavia’s Institutional Framework for Cultural Foreign Policy

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: When you talk about Yugoslav foreign cultural policy, I think it has, it’s important to have in mind that it was closely intervened and affected by the developments at the political scene in Yugoslavia. And that interaction is very important for understanding both Yugoslav engagement with the nonalignment on the level of culture and politics and the economy. 

PETER KORCHNAK: The main developments here included self-management and decentralization.

Yugoslavia conducted its cultural diplomacy through various bodies at the national and provincial levels.

First among them was the Committee for Culture and Art, structured within the Ministry of Science and Culture. One of the Committee’s tasks was to develop cultural ties with foreign countries. 

Beginning in 1953 that work was done within the Federal Commission for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, which promoted Yugoslav art and artists abroad and brought foreign art and artists to Yugoslavia. 

BOJANA PIŠKUR: And the committee also dealt with cultural exchanges with the nonaligned countries. 

PETER KORCHNAK: This federal Commission managed projects of all-Yugoslav importance. 

Similar commissions in the republics and autonomous provinces did the work for projects of republican and provincial importance.

The other pillar of Yugoslav cultural policy was self-management, which both decentralized culture and stimulated creativity. 

Self-management aimed to democratize culture, develop national and nationalities cultures on a free and equal basis, activate regional and local communities and emancipate them from provincialism, open Yugoslavia to world cultural processes and trends, and assert the cultural role of the working people.

As the state ceded decision-making to society, a web of culture makers developed. Below the aforementioned federal and republican bodies, republican assemblies and their executive organs as well as republic-level autonomous associations called cultural communities, allocated funding. Only very important events of Yugoslav-wide importance and major exhibitions targeting the nonaligned world were decided upon and fully funded from the federal budget. Most of the financing for international cultural exchanges came from the republics and provinces themselves. 

Cultural, art, and professional associations and cultural committees within all-Yugoslav mass organizations participated in creating and implementing the cultural policy as well. In the spirit of self-management, all of these outfits made decisions about their activities, for the most part anyway. 

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia decreed that no nation or culture within Yugoslavia had priority and they all contributed to quote “the common cultural treasury of mankind.” 

This thinking extended to the community of nations around the world.

International cultural exchanges ballooned. On the official, state level, by 1969, Yugoslavia cooperated with one hundred countries, via bilateral agreements, treaties, and conventions. 

Within the Nonaligned Movement, between 1958 and 1989 Yugoslavia signed cultural cooperation agreements with 28 countries, beginning with Sudan and Egypt. Contracts included sections about visual arts, with specific exhibitions, large and small, or festivals planned in advance. 

Aside from a few specific projects, the state worked to support rather than control or design the cultural network with the nonaligned. The state initiated the cooperation and then institutes, museums, galleries, cultural and artistic societies, as well as artists, writers and scientists did the actual work. 

BOJANA PIŠKUR: In Yugoslavia, there were quite some cases of cultural exchanges, cultural other, cultural significant events related to the Nonaligned Movement. There were exhibitions, there were meeting, seminars, etc. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Under self-management Yugoslav cultural and artistic institutions operated with a great deal of independence, which extended to cultural co-operation with foreign countries or institutions in foreign countries. 

Exhibitions, festivals, performances, tours, meetings, congresses, summer schools, colonies, and symposia of artists, scholars, and cultural workers, that is employees of cultural institutions, were in large part done at this level. 

BOJANA PIŠKUR: In practice, this meant that Yugoslav museums, museums, meaning museums in each of the six Yugoslav republics, they were kind of required to select programs that would travel to the nonaligned countries, and in return, the nonaligned countries would prepare events, exhibitions and so on, to send to Yugoslavia. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Cities conducted their own cultural exchanges as well. 

In the system of self-management, artists were freelance cultural workers with a great deal of artistic and creative freedom. Individual artists, architects, designers and other culture workers often participated in exchanges with the Global South without any official institutional knowledge or coordination. One example was mail art, which you’ve heard about in Episode 31, “The YUruguayan Connection: The Lost World of Yugoslav Mail Art.” (And that’s mail as in, postal.)

In fact, culture was transferred into the hands of the people to the point where, quote, “private initiative in the nonaligned network often yielded the most authentic results in the field of cultural diplomacy,” as Nemanja Radonjić writes. More on this later in the show.

[SOUNDBITE – “Zabour” by Baligh Hamdi]

Yugoslav Arts and Culture in the Nonaligned World

PETER KORCHNAK: Yugoslavia’s support for liberation movements that I discussed in the second installment of our series on nonalignment was connected to and played a big role in its cultural policies.

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: The idea of nonalignment was tied to the Yugoslav experience of antifascist resistance during the Second World War. And it was a very important element of solidarity, the source of solidarity for liberation movements in the Global South. 

For supporting the very concept of nonalignment, the idea of nonalignment, and energizing the much broader public to support that idea, the very important connection between Yugoslav historical experience and the historical experience of decolonization were different fights for liberation that were going on in the Global South. And that was that connecting point to which those number of documentaries, films that were broadcasted through Yugoslav TV, that were shown at the cinemas, were counting on.

PETER KORCHNAK: These political and institutional frameworks based on nonalignment and self-management helped Yugoslavia create a global cultural network that enabled the country to have unprecedented exchange with the countries and cultures of the Global South.

BOJANA PIŠKUR: And these exchanges happened to be very rich, and they were quite many. Of course, they are not so known. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Cultural cooperation took several forms. First, Yugoslavia sent art and artists abroad. 

In its cultural diplomacy and activities, Yugoslavia sought to present itself as a modern state, perhaps not as developed as the countries of the West but working on it with much early success thanks to self-management. After 1948, Yugoslavia rejected socialist realism as an artistic paradigm imposed by the Soviet Union and swung the other way to adopt modernism, which had originated in the West. 

According to Kolešnik, Yugoslavia did send out folklore music and dance groups but most of the production consisted of high art, including classical ballet and music, modern art, Partisan and documentary films, as well as contemporary feature films, and exhibitions of Yugoslav postwar architecture and design, with the most widespread art medium being graphic art. The most frequently used format for disseminating visual art was the travelling exhibition and to a lesser degree major international exhibitions and biennales.

A particularly rich cultural exchange was with Egypt, one of Yugoslavia’s closest friends in the nonaligned world. The two countries signed a bilateral cultural agreement in 1958. 

One of the early major successes was Yugoslavia’s participation in the Alexandria Biennale for Mediterranean Countries, where Yugoslav modernism won the most prizes at the first two editions, in 1955 and 1957. 

Another example: Belgrade Opera performed often in Cairo, 17 times in 1961 alone. The hosts even asked the Yugoslavs to help establish and develop the Cairo Opera. 

There were some challenges too. When early on the Yugoslavs sent folklore groups to Egypt, the hosts expressed their wish for more modern genres. When Yugoslavia sent a delegation of writers to Egypt, the Egyptians were said to be so dissatisfied with the poor quality of the Yugoslav delegation that they decided not to return the visit. A similar situation happened when Yugoslav film distributors sent second-rate films to the Yugoslav Film Weeks festival. 

A different type of culture clash happened around the translation of Ivo Andrić’s The Bridge on the Drina.

DAMIR VUČIČEVIĆ: In 1961 when Ivo Andrić won the Nobel Prize for literature there was almost an immediate interest in translating the novel to different languages, including Arabic. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Damir Vučičević has a days old doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also a Yugoblok member. Come hang out with us at Yugoblok!

DAMIR VUČIČEVIĆ: A publisher in Cairo’s best interest in translating Andrić’s novel. So this was done in Yugoslavia initially, and it was done the way it’s written. And when the Egyptians got the novel, they were really taken aback [at] what they saw as essentially anti-Muslim bigotry, these very graphic scenes of, you know, Muslims or Turks, right, killing Christians or whatnot. So this was a very delicate topic in Egypt. 

This, of course, is also a debate in Yugoslavia itself, even today, especially today, you know, sort of legacy of Ivo Andrić. But it was immediately noted by the Egyptians that, you know, this is intense. 

So the publisher partnered with, I think it was Belgrade University, whoever translated originally, they partnered together about, you know, toning it down for the Arabic translation of the novel. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Especially after the early experiences in Egypt, Yugoslavia would send high culture there and other countries in North Africa. The nonaligned world accepted Yugoslavia’s export of modernist art in large part because it was fraternal rather than colonizing. 

Because North Africa was close to the West geographically as well, for Yugoslavia, those countries became especially important in its cultural diplomacy. In North Africa, the Yugoslavs found audiences to be receptive and of quote unquote higher level than other parts of the continent, where they would continue to send folk culture. There was also little point in sending high culture to sub-Saharan Africa because the few museums that existed there stood largely empty. 

Between 1952 and 1987 Yugoslavia organized, promoted, or sponsored more than 60 individual and group exhibitions of Yugoslav artists in non-Western countries. 

Exhibitions of Yugoslav art in the nonaligned world proliferated in the 1960s: India in 1962, Tunisia in ‘63, Egypt in ‘64, and so on. 

Then the number of exhibitions exploded in the 1970s, particularly with travelling art exhibitions. Many exhibitions toured several countries featured multiple artists; for example, “Contemporary Yugoslav Print/Graphic Arts” toured across South and Central America, the Middle East, and North Africa between 1966 and ‘68 with more than a hundred works of art by sixty artists.

Yugoslav artists also traveled to various symposia, residencies, and artist colonies in nonaligned countries. 

They also worked on specific commissions. For example, at the request of “comrade emperor” Haile Selassie, Antun Augustinčić and Frano Kršinić made the Monument to the Victims of Fascism in Ethiopia’s capital. 

Add to that participation in biennales and triennales, like the aforementioned Alexandria Biennale or the São Paulo Biennale and Triennale-India, and you end up with hundreds of exhibitions of Yugoslav artists’ work abroad over the 30 plus years of nonalignment.

In addition to contemporary art, Yugoslavia did also continue to showcase its cultural heritage and folk culture. 

In the 1970s, Yugoslav film and television production became a major export. The other day on Instagram an Algerian writer commented on my post featuring the poster of Valter Brani Sarajevo: “In my country Algeria Yugoslav partisans’ movies were very popular in the past, especially “The Battle on the Neretva” . Smrt fašizmu i kolonijalizmu, sloboda narodu.” End quote.

[SOUNDBITE – “Mawood” by Baligh Hamdi] 

Nonaligned Movement Cultures in Yugoslavia

PETER KORCHNAK: In the other direction, Yugoslavia was a venue for art and artists from nonaligned countries. It worked hard to introduce the cultures of nonaligned countries to domestic audiences and thus educate them about the nonaligned world and rally their support for the nonaligned policy. 

Yugoslav–African cultural encounters started already in the mid-1950s with a series of exhibitions, concerts, folklore group visits, book translation programs, and artists’ exchanges. The idea was for Yugoslavia to serve as a bridge connecting African cultures with Europe in order to change Europeans’ stereotypes of Africa and display African culture as part of global culture and equal with other cultures. Yugoslavia was, in that regard, a springboard for African culture in Europe. As Radina Vučetić writes, Yugoslavia argued not only for the decolonization of culture, but also for a “decolonization of mind.”

The bridge position was a peculiar choice, according to Kolešnik.

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: The ties between the former colonial metropolis, like, for example, between the Paris and in the former French West Africa remained, cultural ties remained very, very strong. I’m having in mind activities of a Senegalese government and a very, very strong exchange with France. 

So I think that on [the] Yugoslav side, it was a more aspiration reflecting the position, Yugoslav position vis-a-vis the Nonaligned Movement, or within the Nonaligned Movement, for which Paul Stubbs uses a very, very accurate term, liminal hegemony.

PETER KORCHNAK: According to Stubbs, whom you heard in the introduction to our series on nonalignment, liminal hegemony was a peculiar feature of Yugoslavia’s position in the Nonaligned Movement: it was both between the Global North and the Global South and it provided leadership of the Movement.

The most visible presence the Nonaligned Movement had in Yugoslavia was in the form of art exhibitions. Africa was particularly prominent in this regard. Yugoslavia exhibited both traditional and modern art, often side by side.

Between 1959 and 1991, more than 60 large and countless smaller exhibitions throughout Yugoslavia presented Africa through traditional and contemporary art, photography, and liberation struggles. Thanks to self-management, exhibitions were held in the largest Yugoslav cities, but also elsewhere in cultural centers, barracks, and workers’ halls.

As with Yugoslavia’s outgoing art, Egypt was a prominent guest in Yugoslavia with its production. In 1961, the Belgrade National Museum showed “5,000 Years of Egyptian Art.” During the first Nonaligned Movement summit later that year, all the participating countries, including Egypt, were showcased in an outdoor exhibition in the Alley of Nations at the Pioneer Park. Beginning in 1962, several exhibitions of Egyptian contemporary and applied art took place in Belgrade. 

There were translations, music, dance, and theater performances, film screenings, literary festivals, and so on. 

DAMIR VUČIČEVIĆ: In the 1950s the Yugoslavia government brought several professors of Arabic from Cairo, from Damascus to teach at Yugoslav universities.

PETER KORCHNAK: One of the first big exhibitions from sub-Saharan Africa was held in Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana in 1965, and it featured traditional masks and art from Senegal, Mali, and Guinea. 

The biggest exhibition was “The Art of West Africa” in 1973 at the Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade. It featured over 420 objects of quote unquote “black art”, including masks, sculptures, ritual artifacts, textiles, and musical instruments. The exhibition then toured around Yugoslavia. 

“Contemporary Sculpture of Makonde, Tanzania” in 1979 and “Contemporary Art from Ghana” in 1980 brought contemporary and modern sub-Saharan art to Yugoslavia, albeit exhibited side by side with traditional folk art. 

Also in 1980, Days of African Cultures saw 20 foreign delegations joining the Yugoslav hosts in Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Ljubljana for book exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, and meetings to agree on cooperation in cultural fields like librarianship, museology, and publishing. The event was followed by a UNESCO conference in Belgrade.

The exhibition “South of Sahara” was a gift from UNESCO and took place in 1981, on the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Nonaligned Movement. It featured traditional art and photographs. It first went on display at the Belgrade National Theater, and then traveled to museums as well as factories, schools, houses of culture, sport stadiums, and army bases.

In the 1970s, the Institute for Africa from Zagreb and the Literary Club “Bagdala” from Kruševac created the Library of Non-Aligned People, an edition of works featuring literature from nonaligned countries. Its 80-some titles included collections of contemporary poetry from Bolivia, Cameroon, Kuwait, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Venezuela. 

Also in the 1970s, artists from nonaligned countries attended art colonies and residencies around Yugoslavia, such as in Ostrožac, Počitelj, Prilep, and Strumica.

Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts

PETER KORCHNAK: At Piškur’s institution, Moderna Galerija or the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana—

BOJANA PIŠKUR: —in 1955 there was International Biennial of Graphic Arts established and since 1961 this graphic biennial was also very much connected to the Nonaligned Movement, because many artists from these countries sent their prints, their graphic works, to be exhibited.

And in return, Moderna Gallerija often organized so-called traveling exhibitions to go to various nonaligned countries, and this traveling exhibitions sometimes lasted year, year and a half, and were quite specific in this regard.

PETER KORCHNAK: The mission of the Ljubljana Biennale was twofold. One, it promoted Yugoslavia’s role in international culture and cooperation. As its founder Zoran Kržišnik said, “We make a biennial in order to make our way into the world.” 

And secondly, it aimed to showcase artists from non-Western and later primarily nonaligned countries. As a result, the Biennale worked to challenge and decenter the dominant narrative that classified modernism as a Western phenomenon. 

The biennial continued after Yugoslavia’s dissolution but is nowadays focused on contemporary art overall.

Graphic arts were chosen as a democratic medium. Prints were also easy to transport and had a tradition in Partisan art in World War II. 

While the first Biennale featured few African and Asian artists, as Yugoslavia became enmeshed in the Nonaligned Movement growing numbers of artists from the Global South were present. By 1977, nonaligned artists authored 70 percent of the exhibited works. 

In addition to all this, two standalone institutions promoted art from nonaligned countries in Yugoslavia. 

Museum of African Art

PETER KORCHNAK: The Museum of African Art in Belgrade opened its doors in 1977 and is still in operation today. I have to admit, not without some embarrassment, that in all my years traveling to the former Yugoslavia, I have yet to visit it.

BOJANA PIŠKUR: The museum is also part of this nonaligned liberation art and culture.

PETER KORCHNAK: The museum arose from a private initiative of two Yugoslav citizens. 

Zdravko Pečar and Veda Zagorac were a husband-and-wife couple who were long-time communists and former Partisans.

They spent some two decades in Africa. Zagorac was a cultural attache, whereas Pečar was a journalist who had worked as the editor of Politika newspaper. The couple participated in the Algerian War of Independence: Zagorac as a propaganda officer, Pečar as a combatant and correspondent. 

Outspoken in their anticolonialism, throughout their stay in West Africa the couple collected sculptures, textiles, ritual and everyday objects, including movies and books, and various traditional and tribal art works.

Before they returned to Yugoslavia, in 1974 they donated their collection of some 2,000 objects to the City of Belgrade, which helped create the museum dedicated to African art and culture, in a newly built, dedicated facility no less, with a design inspired by African architecture.

The museum was billed as the only anti-colonial museum in Europe.

BOJANA PIŠKUR: The exhibition setup, the collection setup, is there since 1977 and it’s protected under cultural heritage. So it means when you go to this museum, you will see the same exhibition setup as it was in 1977 when the museum was opened.

PETER KORCHNAK: Temporary exhibitions included “2,000 Year of Nigerian Art” in 1977 and “On the Edge of the Sahara” in 1979. The museum had strong cooperation with UNESCO and the African Institute for Cultural Research in Dakar, Senegal. The collection also includes gifts to Yugoslavia from African statesmen and dignitaries. 

In its first ten years, 50,000 visitors came through the museum, and a million people saw the exhibitions it organized in various cities around Yugoslavia.

During its socialist years, the museum acted as a de facto African cultural center. In addition to exhibitions, it hosted numerous meetings, with heads of state, diplomats, museologists, art experts, and intellectuals working to develop cultural ties between Yugoslavia and its nonaligned friends and allies from Africa.

“In this way,” writes Radina Vučetić, “the museum became an emancipatory meeting place, a forum where Western and Eastern art hegemony could be questioned.” The Museum was, “the largest space for Yugoslav encounters with Africa within Yugoslavia.” 

Josip Broz Tito Art Gallery of Non-Aligned Countries

PETER KORCHNAK: The other major place where Yugoslavia hosted art from the Global South was the Josip Broz Tito Art Gallery of Non-Aligned Countries in Titograd, today’s Podgorica.

BOJANA PIŠKUR: In 1981 there was the idea by some individuals from the city of Titograd to establish a museum, a collection that would host or be home to art from the nonaligned countries. This idea was politically stimulated, and later on, it was also very much accepted by the Nonaligned Movement. 

PETER KORCHNAK: The only art institution of the Nonaligned Movement opened in 1984, on the 20th anniversary of the Cairo Conference. Accordingly, the idea, as outlined in the inaugural catalog, was that “all nations have the sovereign right to develop their national culture and share in cultural exchange with other peoples, and help create, on an equal footing, the cultural treasures of mankind.” 

BOJANA PIŠKUR: What is specific of this collection is that the works were donations. The works were gifts. 

PETER KORCHNAK: The Gallery’s unique status, under joint ownership of all nonaligned countries, as well as its acquisition strategy, through gifts and donations, “helped establish its specific identity as an institution that steered clear of cultural colonialism,” writes Vuk Vuković. Showcasing art from nonaligned countries, which was marginalized, if not completely absent in the West, served quote “the development of cultural pluralism in the world.”

Yugoslav embassies in some 55 countries would receive and process art works selected by local art institutions or cultural organizations and then send them to Titograd. Egypt donated the most works to the collection of any country.

No art work was rejected. As a result, diverse artworks, from ancient archaelogical exhibits to contemporary art, from art created on site to works produced in nonaligned countries, were exhibited in various eclectic ways. 

In its first five years, the Gallery organized more than one hundred exhibitions and grew its collections to more than 750 pieces. And aside from exhibitions the Gallery also organized lectures, conferences, residencies, and publications, all promoting art from nonaligned countries and helping to create an international network of art production and dissemination.

The Gallery organized the first exhibition of modern art from nonaligned countries outside of Yugoslavia in 1986, in Harare, during the 8th summit of the Nonaligned Movement; the exhibition then toured several other nonaligned countries. 

BOJANA PIŠKUR: Until 1991 when this gallery ceased to exist as such they collected over 800 works from the nonaligned countries, 10s and 10s of very important artworks, of artists that were extremely important for these countries, for example, Egypt, India, Bolivia, Indonesia, they sent really great works, masterpieces. 

After 1991 when the political situation changed, this gallery closed.

PETER KORCHNAK: In 1995 the gallery was incorporated into the Center of Contemporary Art in Podgorica.

BOJANA PIŠKUR: And since four or five years ago—

PETER KORCHNAK: —the nonaligned artworks are again—

BOJANA PIŠKUR: —accessible to publics, to researchers, to curators, so the collection can be seen in all its glory again.

[SOUNDBITE – “Ewellan” by Koudede]

PETER KORCHNAK: “Ewellan” by the late Koudede from the album Guitars from Agadez Volume 7. Again courtesy of Sublime Frequencies. Buy their music on Bandcamp! The links are at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia.

Criticism of Yugoslavia’s Foreign Cultural Policy

PETER KORCHNAK: Yugoslavia’s cultural diplomacy did have its problems and shortcomings. 

First, financial constraints. As with its humanitarian and military assistance to the Global South, funding for cultural projects wasn’t always stable or sufficient. 

As helpful as self-management was for fostering exchange from the bottom up, it also led to a lot of disparate projects done in a disorderly way. The idea was big and the scope broad, but the work lacked goals and coordination.

For example, the cultural community organizations that disbursed money for cultural activities determined their criteria only one year in advance, which not only made long-term planning impossible, it also hampered the stability of funding. 

Organizations in less developed parts of Yugoslavia also had less money and consequently struggled to finance their own cultural activities, let alone fostering international exchanges. 

Most outgoing exhibitions were produced in the three main cultural centers, Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana, while other republican capitals and cities were mostly on the receiving end of exchanges. At the same time, from the late 70s on, outgoing exhibitions ceased to reference the common state and were billed as national, for example, Contemporary Macedonian Art.

Even as there was some top-down direction in and toward the nonalignment framework—

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: It was always somehow directed, composed, planned and applied through a number of different offices and state organizations that were quite inert and actually reflecting the lack of real interest in the Global South cultures. 

Regardless of a kind of nostalgic view on Yugoslav engagement within the Nonaligned Movement, approach from the perspective of how the cultures of the Global South were public presented in Yugoslavia, I would say that there was very obvious lack of interest, real interest, in the Global South cultures.

PETER KORCHNAK: While Yugoslavia did a lot of work in and with the Global South, it did not really study it, which points to weak interest in understanding the area.

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: From 1961 to 1989 there wasn’t any newly established department at any university in Yugoslavia dealing with some particular aspect of Global South cultures, whether in visual arts, in literature, music or any other type of art.

PETER KORCHNAK: Part of the reason for this went back to funding. 

Another reason was decentralization. As Yugoslavia devolved powers to the republics, which in turn pursued their own, increasingly nation-focused interests, an all-Yugoslav cultural policy was increasingly difficult to implement. 

Finally, Yugoslavia pursued international cultural exchange in order to democratize and equalize art on the global level. It wanted both to promote its own art and to bring the Global South’s art to the rest of the world. But, writes Kolešnik, the work exhibited “cultural prejudices” and “indisputable Eurocentrism,” which was rooted in the education system.

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: I think the fundamental problem is that the model of modernization or modernity that was offered through the Yugoslav cultural programs was really Eurocentric. 

And its emancipatory potential, in the sense that it was trying to meet halfway at least the cultural requirement of newly established countries and their developmental needs after the moment of decolonization, was really insufficient.

PETER KORCHNAK: Yugoslavia may have wanted to promote African art as original, authentic, deserving of appreciation, and equal to any other. But, especially in the earlier years, the image of Africa as a backward continent persisted in the presentation of African cultures.

Yugoslav officials presented ancient cultures and African folk art, even when partner countries resisted, according to Kolešnik. They saw contemporary art as a Western import that should take second place.

The attitude did change some, in fact early on, and modern contemporary art would be increasingly shown in Yugoslavia. But—

BOJANA PIŠKUR: Within the nonaligned cultural deliberations and discussion, there was quite a problem, especially in Yugoslavia, with works of art coming from the nonaligned countries, especially with works of art that did not adhere to the Western art canon, because cultural workers, curators, researchers, and critics in Yugoslavia had quite a problem seeing these works as works of art, and it very often happened that the works arriving to Yugoslavia as a part of this cultural exchanges were not shown in the Museum of Art, but in the Ethnographic Museum, unfortunately. 

Even the works in the museum in Podgorica, in Titograd, the nonaligned collections, the reception by some prominent Yugoslav art historians were quite harsh, and some of them said that these are works of some unknown artists from exotic places, and they do not deserve to be shown in a museum. 

It’s very harsh sometimes, I’m really surprised that cultural politics, on one hand, were really progressive, let me put it this way, but the reality was really different, like they didn’t understand what it was all about, and they also they perceived this works through the Western eyes only.

PETER KORCHNAK: Decolonizing and nonaligned Africa continued to be presented through stereotypes and exotic imagery. 

Visitors to exhibitions, particularly where traditional art was presented, showed  appreciation for what they saw but their comments mostly highlighted the exoticism of the art. 

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: On the on the level of representing the cultures of the Global South or the nonaligned countries, the focus was much more frequently on the ethnographic materials and the heritage of the ancient cultures that were thriving on within the member countries, like, I don’t know, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, or ethnographic material from from Africa.

PETER KORCHNAK: By presenting Yugoslav art in nonaligned countries and art from nonaligned countries in Yugoslavia, writes Radina Vučetić, “Yugoslavia made local cultures global by accepting pluralities in art and the richness of both Yugoslav and African cultures.” It showed respect for small, developing countries such as itself and for their cultures. Africa did become familiar to Yugoslav audiences and its image improved from an unknown world to a friend.

But the number of outgoing exhibitions, that is of Yugoslav art in nonaligned countries was more than double than that of incoming exhibitions. This was on the one hand a function of funding, which was lacking in the Third World even more than in Yugoslavia, but also of priorities, where Yugoslavia was understandably more interested in presenting its own artistic production than promoting that of other countries.

Additionally, and perhaps as a result, in hindsight it is unclear how much Yugoslavia succeeded in learning and understanding Africa, altering the perceptions of the continent, and overcoming any long-held prejudices and stereotypes through these cultural exchanges.

The media depicted the Global South through the lens of nonalignment, which focused on decolonization and emancipation but also as fragmented and unstable. 

Even the co-founder of the Museum of African Art, Zdravko Pečar himself, expressed dissatisfaction at times with Yugoslav-African cultural encounters.

But he himself as well as his Museum have also been critiqued for the ways art was collected and presented. According to Vučetić, it “resembled a colonial museum that focused primarily on acquiring objects defined as acceptable in Western aesthetic terms, such as statues and masks” and on “collecting objects from specific ethnic groups.”

Contemporary art historians in the 1980s also criticized the Titograd gallery for collecting works “from authoritarian states that support official art.”

On the receiving end, that is in the countries of the Global South, the ambition behind the cultural exchanges ran into logistical challenges, especially the lack of infrastructure like exhibition or concert halls or publishing companies. 

Yugoslav officials, writes Kolešnik, also displayed a lack of understanding of other cultures and having inadequate information about the local art scenes. 

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: Yugoslavia developed its foreign cultural politics having in mind cultural exchange, both with East and the West. And by developing its model of cultural exchange, it was focusing on the countries of the parts of the world which had quite developed cultural infrastructure in comparison to [the]  nonaligned world that was in the phase of decolonialization, and that simply didn’t have [the] infrastructure to support a number of Yugoslav cultural programs. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Be all of that as it may, the fact remains that in Yugoslavia—

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: —after the Second World War, the politics of nonalignment appeared at a certain moment as a kind of influence on the cultural politics governing the entire cultural production. So you cannot you cannot just pass by that influence. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Indeed, it led to the development of a new artistic language, a specific kind of modernism, or as Bojana Videkanić has termed it, “nonaligned modernism.”

That story is in the extended episode, reserved for Yugoblok members who make everything you’ve heard so far possible through their membership contributions.

[OUTRO MUSIC – “Jugoslavijo / Od Vardara pa do Triglava” by Horn Orchestra]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening and visiting. 

All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself. 

Find additional information, sources, embeds, links, photos, and the transcript of this episode at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia. 

And while you’re there, join Yugoblok as a member. Not only will you gain access to the extended version of this and all other episodes, you will join a growing community of yugodiasporans and others whose support makes this podcast possible and free to all.  

Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić. Additional music by Baligh Hamdi and Koudede courtesy of Sublime Frequencies. Buy their music on Bandcamp!

I am Peter Korchňak. 

Ćao!

LJILJANA KOLEŠNIK: If you want to learn something from the past, nostalgia is not particularly constructive…

Additional Sources

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• Hofman, Ivan. “Komitet za kulturu i umetnost pri Vladi FNRJ.” Arhiv, časopis Arhiva Jugoslavije 2 (2001): 42-48
• Jagduhn, Nataša. “Yugoslavia’s Window to Africa: The Establishment of the Museum of African Art Belgrade as a Product of the Cultural Politics of Nonalignment.” H-Soz-Kult 27.02.2021
• Kardelj, Edvard. Yugoslavia in International Relations and in the Nonaligned Movement. Belgrade: Socialist Thought and Practice, 1979
• Kolešnik, Ljiljana. “Practices of Yugoslav Cultural Exchange with Non-Aligned Countries.” In: Paul Stubbs, ed. Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023, pp. 176-202
• Kolešnik, Ljiljana. “Yugoslav Art Colonies – International Cultural Exchange, and Public Cultural Diplomacy ‘From Below’.” In: Darko Fritz, ed. 2022 Symposium Proceedings. Korčula: Siva Zona, 2025, pp. 52-67
• Majstorović, Stevan. Cultural Policy in Yugoslavia. Paris: UNESCO, 1972 
• Piškur, Bojana. “The Non-Aligned Movement and Cultural Politics in the Former Yugoslavia.” ‘Bandung Humanisms’ Conference paper. New York: Columbia University, April 2014
• Radonjić, Nemanja. “Kulturna diplomatija nesvrstane Jugoslavije – Odblesak zaboravenog nasledja.” Kultura (2021): 137-153
• Rubinstein, Alvin Z. Yugoslavia and the Nonaligned World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970
• Stubbs, Paul. “Socialist Yugoslavia and the Nonaligned Movement: Decolonial Contradictions.” Postcolonial Politics, June 5, 2023
• Stubbs, Paul. “Introduction: Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Contradictions and Contestations.” In: Paul Stubbs, ed. Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023, pp. 3-26
• Videkanić, Bojana. Nonaligned Modernism: Socialist Postcolonial Aesthetics in Yugoslavia, 1945-1985. Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019
• Videkanić, Bojana. “Nonaligned Modernism: Yugoslav Culture, Nonaligned Cultural Diplomacy, and Transnational Solidarity.” Nationalities Papers (2021): 1-19
• Vučetić, Radina. “The Exhibition: Exhibitions as Spaces of Cultural Encounter—Yugoslavia and Africa.” In: Kristin Roth-Ey, ed. Socialist Internationalism and the Gritty Politics of the Particular: Second-Third World Spaces in the Cold War. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, pp. 77-96
• Vuković, Vuk. “Cultural Diplomacy and the Transnational Networks of the Gallery of Art of the Non-Aligned Countries “Josip Broz Tito”.” Post, July 24, 2024