After earning a B.A. M.A. in International Affairs from Corvinus University in Budapest, Prof. Salgó completed her Ph.D. in International Affairs at Sapienza University of Rome. She also holds a laurea magistrale in Art History from Sapienza University.
Since 2007 Prof. Salgó has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in World Politics, Visual World Politics, International Organizations, European Union, Politics of Enchantment, Politics of Magnificence: Art Power and Politics in Rome at both private and public universities. From 2004 to 2008 she worked as a research fellow at a foreign policy think tank – IPALMO, offering her expertise to projects (sponsored by the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations System Staff College and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) relating to the social and political development of Middle Eastern, North African and Eastern European countries.
Prof. Salgó works across disciplines. Drawing upon insights from cultural and visual studies, anthropology, social sciences and art history, she studies the nexus between visuals and politics, the nature of charismatic leadership, the symbolic and the mythological construction of social communities and the dramatization and sacralization of politics.
In the book Psychoanalytic Reflections on Politics: Fatherlands in Mothers’ Hands (Routledge 2014), Prof. Salgó portrays nostalgia for paradise as a yearning intrinsic in human nature and politics as a realm where people’s desire to experience transcendence is played out. Her main argument is that the driving force for the formation of political communities is fantasy – “illusions” in a Winnicottian sense, “phantasies” in a Lacanian sense, “phantoms” as described by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok and “dreams” as interpreted by Sándor Ferenczi. The book suggests that, especially in times of flux and uncertainty, people seek to find in public life the resolution, love, and wholeness that were lost in private life; to unite what vanished, or never existed but which was intensely sought after. She unveils the many ways in which political leaders respond to this yearning – the various endeavors aimed at conjuring up a second (virtual) reality, a fantasy world where people may can find a refuge from the overwhelming circumstances of the present, a “cosmion” in the midst of the chaos.
Images from Paradise. Visuals in the European Union’s Politics of Transcendence (Berghahn Books 2017) builds on and further develops these themes, offering an exploration on the intersection of aesthetics and politics. Prof. Salgó portrays European federalism as a political doctrine of salvation, driven by a paradise myth, by the fantasy of a redemptive end, characterized by the transformation of the United States of Europe from dream into reality. In particular, she investigates the supranational elite’s attempt to attribute transcendental qualities to the European Union by reinforcing old and inventing new myths, symbols, and rituals. The visual narratives constitute the main object of inquiry – the iconography of the new “Europa” series of euro banknotes and the videos launched by the European Commission, the European Parliament and by the European Central Bank in order to generate “collective effervescence,” to allow for a European carnival to take place, with the hope of strengthening citizens’ loyalty and religious reverence to the dogma of the “ever closer union.”
Her 2022 book Simone Leigh’s Brick House: America’s Mighty-Mighty New Colossus by Postmedia Books (available also in Italian: Spiritualità e femminismo nero nell’arte pubblica di Simone Leigh) illustrates the subversive potential of this African-American visual artist’s attack on the “Western model” (based on capitalism, rationalism and positivism but also on sexism and racism) while it also unveils the intrinsic contradictions of her sculpture. Is Brick House on the Plinth of New York’s High Line an example of provocative art? Does the Spur, or the “piazza,” as Cecilia Alemani (Chief Curator of High Line Art) calls it, represent a democratic public space? Will this Plinth succeed where London’s Fourth Plinth failed, becoming a landmark where the official narrative of the nation can be challenged and rewritten? To unfold these dilemmas, the book draws on urban studies, critical theory, art history, postcolonial and gender studies, psychoanalysis and Yoruba aesthetics, on theories about public space and radical democracy.
In her forthcoming article she reflects on the political dimension of the design of the renovated Ethiopia Room of the Food and Agriculture Organization and suggests that the new Made in Italy setup (re)constructs Ethiopia through the Western gaze and on the basis of old stereotypes and fails in its goal of enhancing the country’s cultural heritage. With her study of this only seemingly “postcolonial” space, she contributes to the debate on the legacy, use and memory of the buildings, places, artifacts and symbols of the Fascist era.
