https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1389158
https://doi.org/10.60056/Lit.2025.35.284–309
Polina Penkova
The exhibition “Gender Check. Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe”, held at the end of 2009. at the Vienna Museum of Contemporary Art, shows the development of the notion of gender in the visual arts of the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. Bringing together works created over a period of sixty years, the exhibition examines the period of socialist realism to the present day to show how concepts of gender change along with the cultural and historical situation. The study uses the narrative about gender created by the exhibition and compares it with works of contemporary Bulgarian literature written by men, in order to examine both the narrative itself and how the category of masculinity fits into it. The object of literary analysis are works by Valeri Stefanov and Galin Nikiforov. The study shows that the rethinking of masculinity does not aim for a cardinal deconstruction, but rather points towards a reconsideration of the boundaries of the traditional narrative about it.
Keywords: visual arts, literature, feminism, postmodernism, sex, gender, masculinity
About the author: Polina Penkova is a PhD student and first-level researcher at the Department of Bulgarian Literature at the Faculty of Slavic Philology at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. Her interests are focused on contemporary Bulgarian literature and gender studies. She is an author of scientific and artistic texts.
