Rooting Solidarities is an interdisciplinary project produced by the Balkanism platform. Guided by an ethos that rejects ethnonationalism as the primary foundation of our methodological approach, Rooting Solidarities employs artistic, scholarly, and archival explorations and interventions to expand how solidarities can be built in both regional and diasporic contexts, particularly among communities shaped by historical and present-day experiences of violence, displacement, and interethnic strife.
Our methodology, centered on disavowing ethnonationalism, is articulated through a deliberate critique of exclusionary, violent, and highly heteronormative ideologies that promote mono-ethnic, anti-pluralistic, and segregated societies. Through our selection of artistic works, scholarly research, and creative practices, we seek to foreground the complexity of Balkan histories, cultures, and communities, past and present, within the region and across its diasporas. In doing so, we challenge reductive narratives that frame the Balkans and its global diasporas through notions of inherent “ancient hatreds.”
Emerging as an extension of Balkanism Issue #1: Diversity as Strength, Rooting Solidarities invites both regional and diasporic Balkan communities to explore how solidarity can be cultivated, sustained, and reimagined across borders. By foregrounding interconnected histories, shared struggles, and plural identities, the project opens space for alternative imaginaries of belonging beyond ethnonationalist frameworks.
Commissioned artists, researchers, and creatives come from a range of socio-economic backgrounds and engage in diverse practices. Balkanism is committed to ensuring that those living and working within the region and across its diasporas are meaningfully represented. This commitment is reflected in its collective working structure, which includes both Balkan-based and diasporic team members. A collective composed of multi-ethnic and interreligious members, inclusive of people with diverse abilities and a wide range of sexual and gender identities.
Through Rooting Solidarities, the aim is to build, open up, and illuminate historical, cultural, and artistic representations that strengthen channels of communication regionally and across diasporas, while also creating opportunities for learning and engagement among communities with no direct connection to the region. The use of the term Rooting draws clear inspiration from the natural world, metaphorically invoking organic symbolism to provoke reflection on how solidarities can be cultivated, grounded in enduring traditions of care, cultural relation, and mutual recognition already embedded within the region’s cultures, while reorienting these practices toward more expansive, inclusive, and future-facing forms of connection.
Through a careful and socially engaged curatorial approach, one that acknowledges regionally entrenched forms of discrimination as well as tensions within diasporic communities, the project brings together multidisciplinary works that ask how solidarities can be built and sustained. It invites reflection on historical and contemporary examples of solidarity within the region: What forms have they taken? Under what conditions have they flourished or fractured? And how might they be reimagined and strengthened for the present and the future?
With an exploratory approach, rather than a fixed, prescriptive definition, the commissioned works will meaningfully guide the direction of the project, culminating in a publication and exhibition. At the same time, Balkanism operates with clear intentionality: while we create space for the open exploration of ideas and expressions, we unequivocally reject fascist ideologies, notions of mono-ethnic societies, and any narratives that perpetuate harm toward our communities, in the region and in their diasporas.
Abstract: Rooting Solidarities is an interdisciplinary project by the Balkanism platform that explores how solidarities can be cultivated within the Balkans and across its diasporas. Rejecting ethnonationalism as a primary methodological framework, the project brings together artistic, scholarly, and archival practices to examine shared histories, plural identities, and collective struggles among communities shaped by violence, displacement, and interethnic conflict.
Emerging from Balkanism Issue #1: Diversity as Strength, the project challenges reductive narratives that frame the Balkans through notions of inherent “ancient hatreds.” Instead, it foregrounds the complexity of the region’s histories, cultures, and communities while creating space for alternative imaginaries of belonging beyond mono-ethnic and exclusionary ideologies.
Through a socially engaged curatorial approach, Rooting Solidarities commissions multidisciplinary works by artists, researchers, and creatives from diverse socio-economic backgrounds across the region and its diasporas. The project asks how solidarities have historically emerged, under what conditions they flourish or fracture, and how they might be reimagined for the present and future.
The project will culminate in a publication and exhibition, opening spaces for dialogue both within Balkan communities and among audiences beyond the region. While fostering exploratory and critical engagement, Balkanism maintains a clear commitment to rejecting fascist ideologies, ethnonationalist frameworks, and narratives that perpetuate harm toward communities in the Balkans and across its diasporas.
Elevator pitch: Rooting Solidarities is an interdisciplinary project by the Balkanism platform that explores how solidarities can be cultivated across the Balkans and its diasporas. Rejecting ethnonationalism as a primary framework, the project brings together artists, researchers, and creatives to examine shared histories, plural identities, and collective struggles shaped by violence, displacement, and interethnic conflict. Through artistic, scholarly, and archival practices, it challenges reductive narratives that portray the Balkans through notions of “ancient hatreds,” instead foregrounding histories of coexistence, care, and resistance.