23
Jul
2026
Art historian Elena Korowin sees herself as a diplomat without a political mandate and teaches cultural transfer – although she struggles with the term.
‘I don’t feel like a stranger anywhere, but I don’t feel I belong anywhere either,’ is how Korowin describes her feelings. Having grown up in Germany and holding German citizenship, she feels she has too much of Eastern Europe in her to feel German, and too much of Germany to feel Eastern European. It is a feeling that many people with a migrant background are likely to recognise. ‘At some point, I decided that I don’t actually want to belong anywhere – and that this is, in fact, my superpower.’
Elena Korowin was born in 1985 in what was then the ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’, or USSR for short. ‘I was born in Leningrad – a city that has changed beyond recognition. Today’s Saint Petersburg bears no resemblance to the Leningrad I grew up in.’ Until she was ten, she lived in the city at the mouth of the Neva, beneath a vast sky and during a period of transition marked by the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In a city that was given a new name, situated in a (supposedly) new country: Russia.
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Art as a constant
Then she moved to Germany with her parents. The family settled in Oberwesel, ‘Middle Rhine romanticism between Mainz and Koblenz’, as Korowin puts it. It was completely different there, she says, being such a small community. ‘I was surprised to find myself in a place where everyone knows one another.’ But, amidst all the changes that shaped her life from an early age, art has remained a constant companion. After completing her A-levels with a focus on art, she began her studies in 2006 at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, specialising in art history, media theory, philosophy and curatorial practice.
Whilst many of her fellow students were interested in digital media, she turned her gaze eastwards. She had noticed that, although they may have studied Malevich, they had hardly explored the wider region of Eastern Europe at all. For her Master’s thesis, she analysed exhibitions that had been shown in both Germany and Russia. How is an exhibition by the artist Jörg Immendorff perceived in Stuttgart, and how is it received when it is on display in a Russian museum in Saint Petersburg? ‘I have always been intrigued by how art tends to be viewed so differently, depending on how one has been socialised,’ says Korowin. This approach has shaped her subsequent work; she has remained focused on the themes of reception, cultural diplomacy and academic research.
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Since 2025, Elena Korowin has held the Chair of Art History, specialising in cultural transfer, at the Braunschweig University of the Arts.
In 2015, she completed her doctoral thesis entitled ‘The Russian Boom: Soviet Exhibitions as a Means of Diplomacy in the Federal Republic of Germany’. ‘In Europe, abstraction was celebrating its success, whilst in the Soviet Union, Socialist Realism was booming. Repin or Malevich, icons or realism – these were therefore the questions facing the cultural policymakers who organised the first exhibitions. A canon of stereotypes and resentments took shape, the effects of which are still felt today in cultural diplomacy and society,’ reads the accompanying blurb.
The perspective from both sides
With the growing geopolitical tensions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, she is repeatedly asked to explain her position and to account for Putin’s behaviour. She understands why Russia is now where it is, with this president, with this population, which is actually supportive on the one hand, yet simply apathetic and lethargic on the other. Korowin emphasises: ‘I really don’t condone it, but I can understand it.’
Whether it’s public criticism of Russia or the sanctions imposed on the country following the annexation, Germany’s stance continues to be a topic of discussion amongst her acquaintances in Russia. ‘I’ve had to explain Germany’s stance towards Russia there as well.’ She hasn’t been back since 2022. And yet she constantly moves between these two worlds.
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At some point, I decided that I don't actually want to belong anywhere – and that this is, in fact, my superpower.
Prof. Dr Elena Korowin, HBK Braunschweig
‘I have this sense of nomadism. Or rather, an idea of diplomacy – diplomacy and mediation between different conceptions,’ is how Korowin sums it up. Whilst most people would use the term ‘culture’ at this point at the latest, she deliberately speaks of ‘conceptions’ and ‘mentalities’. She understands culture as a concept without a fixed, universally valid core. Each person associates their own ideas with it and assigns different elements to it. Accordingly, culture can be thought of more as a network of individual “boxes” which – whilst they may overlap – are never identical. She therefore rejects the idea of a universally applicable concept of culture.
Despite this – or perhaps precisely because of it – in 2025 she took up the Chair of Art History with focus on cultural transfer at Braunschweig University of the Arts. She had previously filled vacant professorships there on a temporary basis and taken on teaching duties. Her present position has been made possible by the Lower Saxony Impulse Professorship. She impressed the assessors with her approach, which is equally grounded in academic, cultural and socio-political engagement.
Taking context seriously
Her aim? Ultimately, what she has been doing all her life: she sharpens our awareness of different perspectives and brings people from diverse backgrounds together. Context is important, she says. Admittedly, this is something she has always worked with in art studies and art history. But: ‘I see it as my task to emphasise this intercultural, transcultural context even more strongly. To say that it’s not just the form, the colour, the material, but also political history.’ Here, too, she continues to explore the question of why an exhibition in Saint Petersburg is perceived quite differently from one in Stuttgart.
‘I’ve said time and again to people who’ve asked me to explain Russia: you think it was so long ago – the Soviet Union, the collapse. An ambivalent new beginning. But it takes at least three or four generations for the whole thing to be processed in any meaningful way.’ In Germany, for example, she says, the situation is similar with regard to people and their experiences in the GDR.
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Being able to reflect on these issues is a great advantage and a source of freedom at art college, says Korowin. “We are in a safe space. I value that greatly. It is precisely here that so much can be possible.”
She wants to bring people from different backgrounds together: Eastern European studies, Eastern European culture and art history, Global Art Studies, Global South Studies, Asian Studies among others. Whilst she observes that there is a great deal of intercultural research, what she very rarely sees is the actual researchers sitting down together at the same table. And that is where she wants to go. ‘I have a feeling that if I sit someone from Kazakhstan next to someone from Serbia, someone from Argentina and someone from Nigeria at the same table, there will be lots of fruitful moments.’ Bringing people together at an art college here in Germany with their different perspectives, discovering what they have in common and what we can learn from that – that is the aim.
She does not resolve conflicts in this way. But that is not her aim either, as she is not in the diplomatic service and therefore not required to seek solutions to such issues. ‘I can explore the issues; I can raise them in my lectures, but I am certainly not the person who can propose a solution. I can, though, point out possible ways ahead,’ which sums up her approach nicely.
She says it is a great advantage and a freedom at the art college that faculty and students are able to reflect on these matters. She tries to convey this to young people and also urges them not to rush into judging things as good or bad. She wants to show them that a deeper examination of the issues at hand can be worthwhile. ‘We’re in a safe space. I value that very highly,’ emphasises Korowin, ‘it’s precisely here that so much is made possible.’ Her professorship offers her plenty of creative freedom. She has the opportunity to incorporate more transdisciplinarity, to work in a more experimental way and try out new teaching formats.
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Many students would love to leave the seminar room with a ready-made answer they could use in the exam. But Korowin does not give them any ready-made answers. “I teach them to think for themselves, to think critically and to question everything,” she says.
It happens that she sometimes fails initially to meet students’ expectations when she tells them they won’t be going away with any ready-made answers. ‘We can really only think things through and try to make progress in that way. I don’t make it easy for them,’ says Korowin. Many would prefer to leave the seminar room with a ready-made package they can use for the exam. But that isn’t the way she works. ‘I teach them to think for themselves, to think critically, and to question everything.’ Maximum freedom – which we would elsewhere find hard to experience – and that, too, presents a challenge.
Despite all the freedoms she now enjoys, she looks back with mixed feelings: many different posts, fixed-term contracts time and again – a classic career path in academia. ‘The journey was very difficult,’ Korowin is quick to make clear. ‘But I kept telling myself not to give up, because this is exactly what I want to do, because this is what I find most important.’
Author: Julie Milch