Homes on the Move for Artists from the Baltic States: Artistic Practices, Mobilities, and Homes

Abstract

The British news media often describes Eastern European nationals coming to work in the UK as unskilled economic migrants, framed as ‘unwanted’ and as jeopardising British culture and economy. Often overlooked in news media and scholarship are alternative examples of human geographic mobilities out of and into Eastern Europe, such as individuals who are working in the cultural sector, namely, visual artists. Many artists from the Baltic States must go abroad in order to get onto the global art market; although, they stay connected or return to their homelands, shaping these art scenes through their cultural remittances and transnational networks. It is important to investigate the Baltic States, as it has been 26 years since their independence from the Soviet Union and 12 years since their accession into the EU. The Baltic States are now established members of the EU, after becoming members of the Eurozone and part of the Schengen Area. Visual artists from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are crisscrossing the EU, taking part in multi-directional routes and multi-cross-cultural connections for work. Often having multiple bases either at once or throughout their career, a lot of respondents’ feeling of home is spatial and mobile. The feelings of home are a mosaic, constutited by these factors of cross-border communications, regular travel, and having several bases for work. The meaning of home, then, is associated with their artistic practice and about relations to people rather than associated with a fixed, physical place. They are not an ethnic diaspora, as what holds them together is their art - it is about what they all ‘do’ in common. This provides a different understanding of the meaning of diaspora, as not defined only by ethnicity. Together, this study explores individuals who move regularly, working and communicating across territorial borders and across ethnic ‘borders’. In a multi-sited study across Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius and other EU cities, this research uses an ethnographic methodology in order to devise a multi-sited and multi-temporal approach for studying travelling individuals. This research uses in-depth interviews with artists and semi-structured interviews with arts professionals; participant observation with an artist in Vienna, at an art institution in Vilnius, and through communication with three artists online over three months; and a visual analysis of artworks.