ANGELA DAVIS GOES EAST? WHITE SKIN AND BLACK MASKS IN THE ART OF SOCIALIST HUNGARY

This essay examines the meanings of blackness in the Hungarian art of the 1960s and 1970s, primarily through the trajectory of Angela Davis. In this period the artistic representation of blackness was widespread in socialist Hungary due to state-initiated solidarity campaigns with the subjugated subjects of the First and the Third World. Through the analysis of works by Béla Kondor, Anna Kárpáti, György Kemény, Tamás Szentjóby and the Orfeo Group the article argues that these artists held different attitudes towards the black liberation struggles, but they were not isolated from the party-line on these insurgencies. Moreover, in certain cases the representation of the subjugated black cultural icons undermined the politics of the state-solidarity, and served as the expression of the artists’ own struggles.