Darina Zavadilová graduated from the Bachelor‘s program in Marketing Communication and PR at FSV UK and the Master’s course in History and Theory of Design and New Media at UMPRUM. In 2010, she completed a study internship focused on Latin American art history at the University of New Mexico, USA, which formed the basis for the main thematic and territorial orientation of her further scientific work. With her dissertation project, she builds on her diploma thesis on design as a political tool on the example of post-revolutionary Cuba. In 2019, she completed a two-month research stay in Havana as part of her doctoral studies. On a professional level, she is also involved in connecting design and the production sphere in practice.
Identity and Ideology in Visual Culture: Czechoslovakia and Cuba 1960-1968
The dissertation of Darina Zavadilová deals with Czechoslovak-Cuban relations in the field of fine arts and visual culture in the 1960s. It examines cultural transfers and processes taking place in the specific cultural-political framework of fulfilling the agreement on cultural cooperation between the two countries. It is based on the premise that strengthening the so-called soft powers formed one of the key strategies of the Soviet Union in penetrating the South American continent, in which the Czechoslovakia figured as an extended hand. It aims to describe the role of our country in the formation of the revolutionary Cuban national identity and raises the question of possible cultural colonialism. The multidisciplinary project reflects a whole range of topics, such as cultural policy, state representation and post-colonialism. In a broader context, it is intended to contribute to the understanding of the complex geopolitical contexts of the visual culture of a bipolarly divided world.
