‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anticolonial Solidarity

Main author: Savage, Polly
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-38971
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
topic DK Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics
DT Africa
N Visual arts (General)
N Fine Arts
description This essay traces the histories and reverberations of the socialist scholarship programmes which brought art and graphic design students from Africa to the USSR during the 1980s. Drawing on the accounts and archives of art students and cultural workers who participated in or supported these programmes, it follows the path of one Mozambican cohort through a Graphic Design degree in Uzbekistan. It shows how, by navigating between the emancipatory opportunities offered by the programme, and the pedagogical expressions of state power that constrained it, the students developed affiliations and aesthetic positions which would survive, appropriate, and resist dominant geopolitical epistemologies. Ultimately, I argue that their artworks and recollections allow alternative, unofficial histories of Cold War solidarity networks to come into sharper focus.
format Journal Article
author Savage, Polly
author_facet Savage, Polly
authorStr Savage, Polly
author_letter Savage, Polly
title ‘The New Life’: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anticolonial Solidarity
publisher Wiley
publishDate 2022
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/38971/