From "Ideological Conceptualism" to "Socialist Conceptualism: The years of exile of the Chilean poet and artist Guillermo Deisler in Bulgaria (1973-1986)

Abstract

While analyzing the case of Chilean artist Guillermo Deisler who, after the Pinochet’s coup d'état in 1973, settled in Socialist Bulgaria, this article problematizes the question of political and social commitment of artists active both in Latin America and in Eastern Europe in this period.  The article proposes to address the issue of change, not so much of the concept of Communism itself, but of the experience of "Real Socialism" during the second half of the twentieth century. Referring to theorists such as Boris Groys or Slavoj Žižek, the text will focus on Deisler's artistic production to reveal how his exile in Bulgaria transformed him from being a left-wing Latin American artist committed to socialist rule to an artist from the Eastern European unofficial art scene.