Books & chapters in books
BOOKS
Caterina Preda, Magdalena Radomska (eds.), Plural and Multiple Geographies of Modern and Contemporary Art in East Central Europe (Routledge 2024).
This edited volume proposes a theoretical reflection on the different artistic geographies of East-Central Europe (ECE) from an interdisciplinary perspective found at the intersection of art history, art and politics, and critical geography. Contributors argue that this multiplicity is a defining feature of the region. At the same time, chapters employ the concept of “plural geographies” and call for an equal geography, based on solidarity and an equal distribution of capital, which could allow plural geographies to exist and be described. The “multiple geographies” of ECE consider the perspective of local conditions and emphasize how this region was part of successive empires with an important ethnic diversity and changing borders, giving it historical layers and multicultural characteristics.The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, political studies, cultural studies, and geography.

Caterina Preda, Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici și artistul socialist de stat (Cluj: Ed. Idea, 2023)
Acest volum analizează rolul jucat de Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici din RPR / RSR în perioada 1950-1990 în consacrarea artistului socialist de stat din perspectiva relaţiei dintre artă și politică, așa cum este ea mediată de arhivele instituţionale ale domeniului artelor plastice. Volumul folosește un corpus important de documente de arhive care privesc UAP (ANIC, ACFP, CNSAS, Ministerul Culturii, MAE, revista Arta plastică / Arta) și propune o analiză detaliată a organizaţiei create de regimul comunist pentru a gestiona domeniul artelor plastice. Printre problemele analizate s-au aflat natura acestei organizaţii, componenta sa sindicală, dar și caracterul său de asociaţie profesională. O a doua arie de interes a vizat situarea UAP în cadrul instituţional cultural comunist și al relaţiei sale cu Ministerul Culturii în ceea ce privește rolul jucat de diferite instituţii subordonate (în principal Fondul Plastic), dar și legat de diverse chestiuni financiare (surse de finanţare, venituri și cheltuieli). Aparent, UAP a fost o instituţie centralizatoare cu rol de intermediar sau de mediator între stat (Ministerul Culturii și PMR /PCR) și artiștii profesioniști. Studiul detaliat al Uniunii ne arată că UAP a coordonat structurile subiacente sau, uneori, paralele ale Fondului Plastic (FP) și Combinatului Fondului Plastic (CFP), dar că relaţia sa cu acestea și cu Ministerul Culturii a variat în cele patru decenii. În timp ce FP avea un rol sindical și de executor, ministerele erau comanditari, iar Uniunea avea doar o autonomie controlată de Ministerul Culturii. Cartea analizează Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici ca instituţie centralizatoare, ideologică și examinează rolul acesteia în sistemul de comenzi de stat, dar și relaţiile sale cu străinătatea și cu Securitatea. În fine, volumul se încheie cu o privire de ansamblu asupra principalelor transformări instituţionale de după 1990.

Caterina Preda, Arte e Estado: políticas da memória na Romênia (Tradução Julia Abdalla), (Copenhague / Rio de Janeiro, Zazie Edições, 2021)

Caterina Preda, Art and Politics under Modern Dictatorships A Comparison of Chile and Romania (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
This book analyzes the relationship between art and politics in two contrasting modern dictatorships. Through a detailed look at the Chilean and Romanian dictators

hips, it compares the different ways in which political regimes convey their view of the world through artistic means. It examines how artists help convey a new understanding of politics and political action during repressive regimes that are inspired by either communism or anti-communism (neoliberalism, traditionalist, conservative). This book demonstrates how artistic renderings of life during dictatorships are similar in more than one respect, and how art can help better grasp the similarities of these regimes. It reveals how dictatorships use art to symbolically construct their power, which artists can consolidate by lending their support, or deconstruct through different forms of artistic resistance.
You can buy the volume here.
or read reviews about it here: 1st review (Public Art Dialogue), 2nd review (Cultural Politics), 3rd review (International Journal of Cultural Policy), 4th review (ArtMargins online).
The State Artist in Romania and Eastern Europe The Role of the Creative Unions
Author: Caterina Preda (ed.) (Editura Universității din București, 2017)
The volume The State Artist in Romania and Eastern Europe The Role of the Creative Unions

edited by Caterina Preda and published by the Editura Universității din București in 2017 is a collection of studies which were presented during the international conference with the same title organized at the Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest on the 5th of November 2016.
You can read the volume here.
Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici din România în documente de arhivă

Authors: Caterina Preda, Dan Drăghia, Dumitru Lăcătușu, Alina Popescu, Cristina Stoenescu (eds.) (Editura Universității din București în 2016)
This volume reunites archival documents from the Romanian National Archives, the Uniunea Artiștilor Plastici (UAP) archives, and the CNSAS archives about the UAP from the period 1950-1990 and 1990-2010.
You can read the volume here.
Chapters in books
Caterina Preda, “Nostalgic reconstructions of the past: the private museums of daily life during communism in Romania” in Monica Ciobanu, Mihaela Șerban (eds.), Between the Memory and Post-Memory of Communism in Romania (Routledge 2024)
Caterina Preda, and Francesca Lessa, the entry on “International Coalition of Sites of Conscience” in the Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice, 2nd edition, edited by Lavinia Stan and Nadya Nedelsky (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Caterina Preda, “Chapter 11 The Role of Art in Restoring Human Dignity at the Threshold of Forgetting Traumatic Pasts” in Probing Human Dignity Exploring Thresholds from an Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by Stephanie N. Arel, Levi Cooper, Vanessa Hellmann (Springer, 2024): 205-222. You can read the chapter here.
This chapter analyzes the role artistic renderings of a traumatic past play in restoring human dignity after dictatorships with specific examples from the Chilean and Romanian experiences and at the threshold of forgetting the past. Although after the Second World War human dignity was established as a foundational concept for human rights, several dictatorial regimes did not respect this assertion. Moreover, while human dignity is often considered inalienable, several artworks analyzed in this chapter have the goal to restore human dignity to the victims of dictatorial regimes, thereby illustrating that human dignity can be violated. Anchored in cultural memory studies, this chapter analyzes the role art plays in restoring human dignity of the victims of dictatorships. I argue that artistic strategies aspire to restore dignity to the victims of dictatorships through a personalization of victimhood, and by giving victims “visual dignity,” or as a form of symbolic reparation.

”The Role of Art in Dealing with the Communist Past” in Justice, Memory and Redress: New Insights from Romania edited by Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 166-189.
“The State Artist during the Communist Regimes in Romania and Eastern Europe: a Theoretical Outline” in The State Artist in Romania and Eastern Europe The Role of the Creative Unions, edited by Caterina Preda (ed.) (Editura Universității din București, 2017)
“Art of memory: contemporary artistic views of the 1989 Romanian Revolution”, Art, society and politics in (post)socialism, edited by Andreea Lazea (Timisoara: Ed. Universitatii de Vest, 2015), pp. 191-210.

This chapter analyses Romanian examples of art of memory that use the Revolutionary momentum, and discusses the different viewpoints adopted, as well as their influence on theon-going construction of the memory of communism. The purpose of this inquiry is to interrogate what does art of memory keep of the diverse interpretations given of the end of the communist regime in December 1989.
„Art contemporain de mémorialisation au Chili: deux exemples de contre-mémoire”, in Le 11 Septembre Chilien Le coup d’Etat à l’épreuve du temps 1973-2013, eds. Jimena Paz Obregón Iturra et Jorge Muñoz (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015), 213-226.

“The digital (artistic) memory of Nicolae Ceauşescu” in Memory, Conflict and New Media. Web wars in Post-Socialist States, eds. Ellen Rutten, Julie Fedor, Vera Zvereva, (London, New York: Routledge: 2013), pp. 197-213


“Civil society activism and authoritarian rule in Romania and Chile. Evidence for the role played by art(ists)“ in Francesco Cavatorta (ed.) Civil Society Activism under Auhtoritarian Rule. A comparative perspective, (London: Routledge, 2013) pp. 57-72.
This chapter presents a comparison of the regional integration pattern followed by Caribbean states and the model pursued by the countries of the Black Sea region after 1990. The purpose of this comparison is to detect if there is a common model of integration in maritime regions.
“Artã şi politicã în dictaturi moderne” in Şantiere de cercetare în ştiinţe politice, ed. Georgeta Ghebrea (Bucureşti: Editura Universitãţii din Bucureşti, 2010), pp. 163-188.
“Looking at the past through an artistic lens: art of memorialization” in History of Communism in Europe. Politics of memory in Post-communist Europe, , new series, vol 1/2010 (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2010), pp. 129-148.

Romanian post-communism has seen slowly the desire to recuperate a lost past and it is only in the years 2000 that an “art of memorialization” is seen developing. The reclaiming and reinterpretation of past symbols and the evocation of the previous period as a means of healing still present wounds is seen in different artistic supports and is somehow situated between legacy and nostalgia. The questions addressed by this investigation are: What and how do we artistically remember? Are there patterns, symbols, common elements that appear in artistic discourses; how are these perceived by the public, what is their impact? And, in the same time: How is an artistic form used by the official discourse so as to memorialize the official version of the past? Thus, the issue of artistic invocation of the past is explored – as a means of construction of an artistic memory (art of memorialization). For that, the discourses of Romanian visual artists (Vlad Nancã, Dumitru Gorzo, Dan Perjovschi), as well as the most important films part of what is called the “Romanian Nouvelle Vague” and which include: 12:08 East of Bucharest (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2006), The paper will be blue (Radu Muntean, 2006), How I spent the end of the world (Cătălin Mitulescu, 2006), Tales from the Golden Age (Cristian Mungiu, 2009) are addressed. Although taken as a corpus these films have quite different standing points on the communist period and its end. I will also briefly compare this recent new wave of Romanian cinema to the earlier look of Romanian cinema onto communism, the cinema of the early 1990s. Moreover, the analysis looks at the way the Romanian state used artistic forms to memorialize through public monuments and statues, public places, parks, and museums. Finally, the issue of the absence and the reasons for this absence of a Museum of communism in Romania is also dealt with.
“Dictators and Dictatorships. Art and Politics in Romania and Chile (1974-1989)” in Terror and the arts. eds. Matti Hyvärinen & Lisa Muszynski, (London: Palgrave Mac Millan, 2008), pp. 147-163.

“The Europeanization of Romanian Political Parties”, in Decizia politică: o formulă interdisciplinară. Mentalităţi şi modelare, ed. Camelia F. Voinea, (Piteşti: Ed. Paralela 45, 2007), pp. 31-101.