Dear Colleagues
We cordially invite you to the April lecture of the series StředověC JinaX. Margarita Khakhanova will tell us whether art history can change the borders of modern states.
As far as this idea sounds far-fetched, there are examples that confirm it. One of them is the impact of how Armenian medieval art was studied in Tsarist Russia.
After the annexation of the Armenian territories to the Russian Empire in the 19th century, the concept of friendship and "brotherhood" between the Russian and Armenian peoples was the main idea of tsarist propaganda (this rhetoric is still used in Russian media today). In reality, however, the situation was quite different from the beginning. The entire Caucasus region was perceived as a mere province and its art (including historical art) was presented as a single cultural phenomenon completely dependent on the Byzantine tradition. Thus, in the texts of contemporary art historians we regularly encounter a colonial view of Georgian and Armenian art. Moreover, the Armenian nation was systematically marginalized and its art was presented as clearly inferior, even pagan.
Could these situations have parallels in today's world? In this lecture, we will try to show to what extent the events of the late 19th century are directly related to the current events in Nagorno-Karabakh, which can be defined as cultural genocide.
We will meet on Thursday 25 April at 7 pm at the Hans Belting Library (Veveří 28). The lecture will be streamed online on our YouTube channel.
The lecture is part of the Contexts of Humanity project of energeia o.p.s.
