I am a University Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art. I specialize in Central and Eastern European art, with a particular focus on the former Yugoslavia. My research examines monuments, conceptual art, and performance art of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as sculpture, memorials, and architecture from the early 20th century.

More information about Seraina Renz

Fields of interest

• Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century
• Performance and conceptual art
• World War II monuments
• Humanist Marxism

Research

I specialize in modern and contemporary Central and Eastern European art, with a particular focus on the former Yugoslavia. My research examines monuments, conceptual art, and performance art of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as sculpture, memorials, and architecture from the early 20th century.
My current research project explores the construction of Slavic identity in Central European modernism through the revival of medieval art forms and their accompanying anthropological discourses; preliminary findings were published in Convivium (2025). Other recent publications have addressed the reception of avant-garde art in 1970s Yugoslavia (Journal of Avant-Garde Studies, 2025), the concept of the "experimental" in performance art (2024), and narrative strategies in abstract sculpture (2020). My first monograph (2018) analyzes Yugoslav conceptual and performance art within humanist and post-humanist frameworks, scrutinizing canon-building processes and the mechanisms of exclusion affecting non-western European art.

Curriculum vitae

I am a University Lecturer of Modern and Contemporary Art at Leiden University, specializing in the intersection of art, philosophy, and political history. My research bridges archival depth with contemporary critical frameworks. I earned a PhD in Art History from the University of Zurich, following an MA in Art History and German Studies.
Before joining Leiden in 2025, I worked at Masaryk University Brno as the Principal Investigator of the research project "Slavophile Art: The Reception of Medieval Art in Monuments for a New Slavic Identity." From 2021 to 2023, I served as Scientific Assistant at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, where I was responsible for the "Rome Contemporary" research priority and pursued a research project on cultural diplomacy between Italy and Yugoslavia.
I have research and teaching experience at institutions such as ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and the University of Fribourg. My work was supported by the Grant Agency of Masaryk University and several scholarships by the Swiss National Science Foundation.