Women and Performance Art in Socialist Hungary (1960–1989): Archival Re-readings of the Hungarian Neo-Avant-Garde through Women’s Practices

Inglese

This thesis examines Hungarian women’s performance and body-based practices from the 1960s to 1989, addressing their persistent underrepresentation in the historiography of socialist-era neo-avant-garde art. Centering on photo-actions and performance documentation often linked to mail art, it analyzes how photographic traces mediated ephemeral works—shaping audiences, meanings, and later institutional reception. The study asks how the female body operated as political metaphor or resistance within socialist Hungary’s unofficial art sphere, how women’s strategies differed from dominant male models of body art, and what the lack of a unified women’s network indicates about gendered conditions of visibility. Drawing on archival and museum research, interviews, and case studies (including Katalin Ladik and Orshi Drozdik), the thesis reconstructs overlooked contributions and argues for a revised narrative attentive to the politics of documentation, circulation, and omission.