The Release of Jana Kukaine’s Monograph on Feminist Art in Postsocialism

Jana Kukaine’s book Visceral Aesthetics: Affects and Feminist Art in Postsocialism is both an innovative and comprehensive study in feminist aesthetics. The author explores how to conceptualize feminist art within the postsocialist condition, including the Latvian context. The book is published in the UL Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (ILFA) series Studia humanitarica by UL ILFA and Riga Stradiņš University.

To approach feminist art and outline its features in the postsocialist situation, Kukaine develops the guidelines of “visceral aesthetics”:

“It is an innovative theoretical approach that registers feminist sensitivities in art and cultural processes, emphasizing lived experience, intimacy, and the embodied subject. The perspective of visceral aesthetics allows us to engage with the Eastern European ‘other feminism’ agenda while situating it within contemporary feminist and art theories.”

The book employs frameworks of feminist aesthetics, philosophy of art, and affect theory, focusing on everyday life, the mundane, the obscure and eerie, as well as on the body and affectivity.

Kukaine turns her attention to Latvian contemporary art, analyzing works by Katrīna Neiburga, Ingrīda Pičukāne, Rasa Jansone, Vivianna Stanislavska, Mētra Saberova, and Vika Eksta.

The book’s reviewer, literary scholar and Daugavpils University Associate Professor Sandra Meškova, notes:

“Jana Kukaine’s monograph embraces multiple perspectives—feminist art, postsocialism, and visceral aesthetics. Each is relevant and compelling in today’s cultural situation, offering insights into art processes from a precisely defined and thoroughly elaborated standpoint. The book addresses issues of historical continuity, inheritance, the topicalization of past processes, and future-oriented thinking, all with erudition and analytical precision. From the very beginning, it promises an exciting intellectual journey—and the promise is more than fulfilled.”

Studia humanitarica publishes the latest research in the humanities, based on recently defended doctoral dissertations. The series includes monographs by Aigars Lielbārdis, Sanita Reinsone, Zita Kārkla, Kārlis Vērdiņš, and others.

Jana Kukaine previously published Beautiful Mothers: Woman, Body, Subjectivity (2016), marking the beginning of a feminist approach to contemporary Latvian art studies. She received her doctoral degree in art theory from the Art Academy of Latvia in 2023 and is currently Associate Professor and Senior Researcher at Riga Stradiņš University. Her research interests focus on environment, body, and art.

Supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation.
Price: 10.00 EUR
The book is available at UL ILFA (Mūkusalas iela 3, Riga; apgads@lulfmi.lv) and in bookstores across Latvia.