While poets, writers, and artists in Russia and Belarus are systematically censored and silenced, their counterparts in Hungary and Slovakia are still battling for freedom of expression, and not only in the arts. Is the Czech Republic next in line? Writer Radka Denemarková, visual artist and curator Ilona Németh, and co-founder of Belarusian Free Theatre Natalia Kaliada will discuss the dangers of the politicisation of culture in Central and Eastern Europe.

Radka Denemarková is a novelist, screenwriter, literary historian, and translator of German literature. She is among the most original and most translated Czech writers today. Her books include Money from Hitler (Peníze od Hitlera, 2006), Kobold (2011), A Contribution to the History of Joy (Příspěvek k dějinám radosti, 2014), The Hours of Lead (Hodiny z olova, 2019), and most recently Chocolate Blood (Čokoládová krev, 2023). In her work she has repeatedly addressed the crisis of European values and the legacy of totalitarianism, exploring the various forms of power relations. She is the only Czech author to have won the Magnesia Litera award in four different categories. She has also received a number of important international awards, including the Georg Dehio Culture Prize (2012), the Brücke Berlin Preis (2022), and the European Tolerance Prize for Democracy and Human Rights (2024). She was also the first Czech writer to be awarded the Odradek Book Prize for a Kafka-related publication, part of the Austrian Franz Kafka Prize (2024). In 2024 she was inducted into the German Academy for Language and Literature, and the same year she was also awarded the Medal of Merit First Grade by the Czech President for her work in the field of culture and art.

Ilona Németh is a visual artist, art professor, and curator who was born into the Hungarian community in Slovakia. Her work often addresses the themes of minorities, immigration, and other social issues. Recently she has been one of the most prominent voices in the protests against the progressive politicisation of Slovak art and culture by the current government. As a professor she led Studio IN and the international education programme Open Studio in the Department of Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava between 2004 and 2019. She has exhibited widely both locally and internationally. Her solo project Eastern Sugar was presented at Kunsthalle Bratislava in 2018. She has held solo shows in Bratislava, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Helsinki, and Rome, among other places. She represented Slovakia (together with J. Surůvka) at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. She co-curated the exhibition series Private Nationalism in six different countries (2014–2015) as well as the two-part project Universal Hospitality (2016, Vienna; 2017, Prague).

Natalia Kaliada is a co-founder and artistic director of Belarus Free Theatre (BFT) and an award-winning theatre-maker, writer, and director. As an internationally renowned diplomat and human rights campaigner, Kaliada has pioneered a unique method of transversal lobbying and campaigning, uniting artistic, geopolitical, environmental, and human rights concerns in order to bring systematic change to different societies. Forced to leave her home in Minsk due to her work as a political campaigner, she was granted political asylum in the UK in 2011. Kaliada originated the Free Belarus Global Artistic Campaign, which has received the support of numerous leading contemporary artists and politicians. In 2000 and 2001 she received two Meritorious Honor Awards for Personal Bravery and Courage from the US State Department. In 2020, together with Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Kaliada created the Women 4 Women Alliance to honour and amplify the voices of the women of Belarus bravely resisting the dictatorship. Kaliada is a committee member for the Magnitsky Human Rights Award, which recognises work in human rights and anti-corruption. In June 2023, she was awarded the MBE for Services to Theatre in the King’s Birthday Honours.