Visual Cultures Research Group Seminar

The Soviet Union was the world’s first self-proclaimed anti-imperial state. Visual images seemed to offer unparalleled opportunities for communicating political ideas across linguistic and cultural borders, and propaganda imagery re-imagined the former colonies of the Russian Empire as liberated, modernising utopias. Propaganda theorists and poster artists grappled with these emancipatory visions and the Eurocentric and Orientalist strands of Soviet visual culture, as well as contradictory demands both to foster national cultures and to forge a pan-Soviet identity. This paper will explore propaganda posters produced in the newly-formed Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, examining what they can tell us about the entanglements of visual culture and stereotype, nation-building, and modernity.