Artists and art of Serbia beyond Serbian borders

Research interest in this work is aimed at voluntary movement of artists from Serbia to Western Europe, from the 1960s till present day. Artists provoked by the "the limitations imposed by the state", and later also by “the break-up of Yugoslavia”, sought a better destination for the development and improvement of their own creative expression, unable to sufficiently do that in their own country. With migrant and indigenous artists living together, along with interweaving of their cultures, thoughts, and artistic handwritings, new artistic identities emerged. Integration of artists and their families in different cultural, social, and religious communities, along with the transformation of their artistic creativity, open up new topics in the comprehension of the migration process. Visual narratives of migrant artists nostalgically record ethnographic vignettes, medieval motifs, and poetic intimacy of Serbia, which attests that no matter where they were creating or living, in their hearts they were still in their own country. Their activities represented international artistic contributions, which is proven by numerous awards and public expositions of their works in Serbia and abroad. This paper aims to encourage institutions and individuals to establish policies that would deal with sustaining links with the artistic diaspora in order to build bridges of cooperation and exchange of experiences between the artists who create in our country and those living abroad, so as to achieve concentric cooperative ties. Artistic creativity of migrant artists, whether it is transposed, realistic or abstract, is illuminated with elements of our national culture, thus the artists, by creating their works, have become cultural ambassadors of their original country