Body, Gender andTransnationalism: Art and Cultural Criticism in a Changing Europe Tal Dekel Tel Aviv University Abstract The term transnationalism, dealing with all facets of immigration – refugees, foreign workers, illegal layovers and migrants from one country to another – has been one of the prominent topics on the public and political agenda of most Western countries in recent years. Through analysing several visual works, this article seeks to draw out the influence of economic, political and cultural changes upon a range of female artists in post-communist countries today. These artists each react differently in their works to the globalisation processes and the major transitions to a capitalistic economy, from a critical and personal point of view. As a result, these artists create what I shall call ‘a polyphonic project’, which is a product of Central and Eastern European artists that set out, and indeed succeeded, to reclaim their voice and body as women, challenging questions of gender, nationality, politics and economy in a changing Europe. The term transnationality, which refers to the various manifestations of immigra- tion – e.g. immigrants, foreign workers, illegal immigrants and migrants – has become prominent on the political agenda of most Western countries in recent years. The fact that migration has gained such impetus can be attributed to a number of causes, including increased mobility resulting from greater accessibility to modes of transport; the growing gap between the industrialised world and developing countries; and local and regional violent conflict, such as in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq or Indonesia, which often results in large refugee populations adrift without home or even state. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Eastern and Central European countries gradually rid themselves of their communist regimes. The subsequent profound sociopolitical changes in the region affected every aspect of citizens’ lives. Alongside the shift to democracy came another change, no less important, from a socialist to a capitalist economy. Although these changes have been discussed extensively in the literature from social, historical and cultural perspectives, 1 little attention has been focused on the question of how these changes are expressed in the field of the visual arts. By analysing several visual works, this article seeks to outline the influence of the above changes on a range of Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism: Vol. 9, No. 2, 2009 175