Perspectives on Art Histories in the Balkans.
Actors, Networks and Practices from the Early Modern to the Contemporary.
Institut national d’histoire de l’art - INHA.

This symposium aims to bring together innovative research devoted to the visual arts of the Balkans, from the modern era to the contemporary period. Researchers and actors from the French and international cultural world will discuss circulation, identity construction, and memory issues, as well as the different ways in which art is produced, opening up a new comparative space for reflection in French art history research.

THURSDAY
19.03.2026
09:00 Welcome / Registration
09:15 Opening remarks
Anne-Solène Rolland (INHA)
09:30 Panel 1
Architectures and Circulations in the Early Modern Period
12:30 Lunch
14:00 Panel 2
Movements, Transfers & Exchanges (1960s–1990s)
16:15 Panel 3
Institutions, Networks & Sites

FRIDAY
20.03.2026
09:00 Welcome
09:30 Panel 4
Identity, Nation & Politics (20th–21st c.)
12:30 Lunch
14:00 Panel 5
Formal & Prosopographic Approaches
16:00 Panel 6
New Patterns of Commitment
17:30 Closing remarks

18:30 Opening of the exhibition of Bojan Stojčić at the Institut d’études slaves (9, rue Michelet, 75006 Paris) followed by a cocktail
 
Panel 1
Architectures and Circulations in the Early Modern Period
From cartographic gazes to architectural idioms and confessional border-zones, this panel analyses visual and spatial recompositions in the Balkans between the 16th and 19th centuries
Moderation: Vincent Thérouin (Ghent University) & Nathalie Clayer (EHESS)

Nicole Kançal Ferrari (Marmara University)
Fluid Visualities in a “Border Region”: Renegotiating Artistic Dialogue and Patronage between the Eastern Balkans and the Ottoman Empire through the Monastery Church of Curtea de Argeş

Thaleia Mantopoulou Panagiotopoulou (University of Thessaloniki)
The Emergence of a New Basilica Type in the Aegean Islands in the 19th Century and Its Subsequent Spread to the Southern Balkans and Asia Minor

Iván Szántó (Eötvös Loránd University)
Water Sanctuaries along the Drava and Sava between Islam and Baroque

Ana Marija Grbanović (University of Bamberg)
Artistic Knowledge Exchange and Transfer via Craftspeople’s Mobility in South-Eastern Europe, as told by Mosques, Churches and Mansions with Wall Painting Decorative Programmes from the Ottoman Baroque Period

Panel 2
Movements, Transfers & Exchanges
Genealogies and circulations of practice: transnational fiber art, postal networks, Franco Yugoslav relational geographies, and Yugoslav counter genealogies
Moderation: Philippe Gelez (Sorbonne Université)

Seraina Renz (Leiden University)
A Genealogy of “New Artistic Practices” in Yugoslavia: Raša Todosijević – Ad Reinhardt – Kazimir Malevich

Monica Seiceanu (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Textile as Threshold: Jagoda Buić and the Transnational Circulation of Yugoslav Fiber Art during the Cold War

Sanja Sekelj (Institute of Art History in Zagreb)
Intersecting Networks: Mapping French–Yugoslav Cultural Relations at the End of the 1980s6

Panel 3
Institutions, Networks & Sites
From production and mediation venues to micro editorial cultures: how institutional infrastructures configure Balkan art histories?
Moderation: Ina Belcheva (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Emilie Blanchard (Sorbonne Université)
Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab) as a Nodal Point in a Trans Balkan History of Digital Art

Adriana Sotropa (Université Bordeaux Montaigne)
Romanian Art History from the Post War to the Early Years of Democracy: Beyond Erudition and Ideology

Darko Aleksovski (artist)
A Small Handbook for Daydreaming: Self Publishing as an Artistic Practice

Alina Popescu (University of Bucharest)
Film Production Units in Communist Romania: From Creative Promises to Political Constraints

Panel 4
Identity, Nation & Politics (20th–21st c.)
How artistic practices and trajectories participate in shaping identity and political constructions: landscapes and rurality, poetics of (un)belonging, cross border film heritage, and arts & crafts genealogies
Moderation: Alessandro Gallicchio (Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis) & Falma Fshazi (CETOBaC, EHESS)

Jérôme Bazin (Université Paris-Est-Créteil-Val-de-Marne)
Терен и конструкции (1979–1981) – Installations, Landscapes, Rurality

Lora Sariaslan (Utrecht University)
The Poetics of (Un)Belonging: The Art of Driton Selmani

Mélisande Leventopoulos (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis)
Film Heritage at the Confines of Macedonia: The Mirroring Histories of Florina and Bitola

Dimitra Douskos (EHESS)
Determining Artistic Authenticity in the Balkans: Angeliki Hadjimichali, Eva Palmer, and the Interlacing of the “Arts and Crafts” Movement with “Folklore Studies”

Gabriela Manda Seith (independent researcher)
Artistic Concepts in Transformation During the Austro-Hungarian Occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Panel 5
Formal & Prosopographic Approaches
Biographies, corpora and styles: re readings of artists and bodies in Balkan contexts, from modernist choreography to women artists’ biographical archives
Moderation: Naïma Berkane (Sorbonne Université)

Rada Georgieva (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
Local Beginnings, Translocal Dialogues: Vesselin Sariev, Guillermo Deisler and the Origins of Mail Art in Bulgaria

Eva Maria Ivanova (New Bulgarian University)
Material Presence and Phantom Archives: The Cases of Carol Rama and Lika Yanko

Jelena Sekulović (Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade)
Between Studio and Nation: Nadežda Petrović’s Paris Atelier as a Vernacular Display

Sandra Uskoković (University of Dubrovnik)
Crossroads and Cartographies: Geoaesthetics and Hybridity in Post-Yugoslav Art

Panel 6
New Patterns of Commitment
Artistic and curatorial practices that reconfigure national narratives: socialist feminisms, post Yugoslav activisms, and exhibitions as symbolic battlegrounds
Moderation: Melody Robine (CETOBaC, EHESS)

Sasha Dimitrova (University of Vienna)
Textile as Political: A Feminist Perspective on Textile Art, Cases on Bulgaria and Macedonia (1970s-1990s)

Ana Dević (Aix-Marseille Université) & Peter Vermeersch (KU Leuven)
Art Activism as Resistance to Nationalism in the Post Yugoslav Space

Ahmet Furkan Inan (University of Oxford)
Contemporary in the Margins: Cultural Difference at the Third Istanbul Biennial (1992) 8

In the context of the symposium, are organized

18 March 2026, 18:00
Screening of the movie Notre endroit silencieux by Elitza Gueorguieva at the Jacqueline Lichtenstein Auditorium of the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), followed by a discussion with Ina Belcheva, Alessandro Gallicchio and Melody Robine.
Elitza Gueorguieva films the creation of the novel that her Belarusian alter ego Aliona is writing about her father, a maritime adventurer, physicist, and dreamer who disappeared off the Turkish coast in 1995. Accompanying this process of mourning and emancipation through writing, the Bulgarian filmmaker invents her own visual language that amplifies the tension between dream and reality, poetry and memory

19 March 2026, 18:30
Opening of the exhibition of Bojan Stojčić curated by Melody Robine
at the Institut d’études slaves (9, rue Michelet, 75006 Paris) followed by a cocktail.
In his exhibition Bureau fantôme, Bojan Stojčić chases the spectres of an agreement signed in Paris more then thirtyyears ago. Expressing himselfbetween poetics and geopolitics, Stojčić explores the traces and transformations of the present.

Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA)
2, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris

Pour plus d’information, écrire à
patrizia.cellivillamedici.it
histoiredelartvillamedici.it

Perspectives on Art Histories in the Balkans: Actors, Networks and Practices from the Early Modern to the Contemporary
18-20.03.2026
Auditorium Jacqueline Lichtenstein, INHA
2, rue Vivienne - 75002 Paris

Organizing Committee
Daniel Baric (Sorbonne Université) Ina Belcheva (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, LIRA) Naïma Berkane (Sorbonne Université )Falma Fshazi (CETOBaC, EHESS) Alessandro Gallicchio (Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis) Melody Robine (CETOBaC, EHESS)Vincent Thérouin (Ghent University)
Academic Committee
Eloïse Brac de la Perrière (INHA) Victor Claass (Musée d’Orsay)Nathalie Clayer (EHESS) Milena Dragićević-Šešić (University of Arts in Belgrade) Irina Genova (New Bulgarian University) Maximilian Hartmuth (Austrian Academy of Science) Jean-Baptiste Minnaert (Sorbonne Université) Zef Paci (University of Arts in Tirana) Gilles de Rapper (École française d’Athènes) Clara Royer (Sorbonne Université) Pierre Sintès (Aix-Marseille Université)4