Cultural Memory and Political Resistance through Religious / Spiritual Art in (Post) Communist Romania
2021
Abstrakt
The chapter argues that spiritual arts in Romania approach religious symbols in their own way, disregarding the strict rules of the Byzantine Herminia in an attempt to enhance 'the spiritual life of humanity' through recalling 'a creative Christianity.' Starting with the end of the 1970s, formerly forbidden borrowings from religious art were accepted by communist cultural hegemony if they backed the official style of communist nationalism and the traditional folk ethos. The artistic production analyzed in this chapter reveals the ways in which open-ended cultural memories can be mixed with new myths and rituals, communicative memories and memories of repression, as well as identity politics.