Mud & Bones: the representation of the past by the most talented Romenian emergent artists.
Opening: January the 17th, 6 PM, @Accademia di Romania (Piazza José de San Martin, 1 – 00197 Roma, Italy). The exhibition lasts until January the 31st, free entrance.
Unexpected imaginaries of conflict and memory: in the collective exhibition, different artists, united by origin -all born and raised in Romania in the 80’s-, recount their relationship with war, dictatorship, history; dialoguing through the languages of sculpture and ready made, video art and photography.
With their work these talented Romanian artists address the issue of conflict in a very personal way, through the re-elaboration of concepts such as identity, memory, fragility and belonging.
A complex past, sometimes dramatic, emerges in the contemporary artworks coming from Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Oradea.
There are two key images that contemporary Roman artists bring to our attention, when they elaborate with pictorial, installation and video arts the recent history of their country of origin: the mud, an element of protection but also of concealment; and the bones, what remains of man, an almost immortal testimony of his essence. These are representative elements of a painful and at the same time rich past, and above all in history of a spiritual relationship with the elements: this is the compositional figure of the emerging artists of contemporary Romania, a landscape that is reborn and revived in a new awakening teeming with artistic energies, new cultural instances and new ways of making art.
The works on show are united by a constant reference, implicit or manifest, to nature and to the ground: the soil, a metaphor of life as well as death, is evoked or represented in the works, in a way that makes clear as the natural elements absorbing mourning, buried and incorporated remains and memories, making the soil a real physical body of collective memory.
The symbolism of the sepulchral element, made of bones and earth, is developed by contemporary artists in its almost prophetic components (not necessarily reassuring) sanctioning the protagonism of the organic nature of the soil, which is evoked as an element of protection and survival but also of concealment and suffocation.
There are five historical episodes that influence in particular the works on display: the legacies of the world wars, the camps of work of Ceauşescu, the revolution of 1989 and the facts of Rosia Montana. These are the elements of the past that rise to the metaphor of the contemporary world and its movements in the arc of the short century.
The exhibition presents a sacral atmosphere, underlining the space of the Romanian Cultural Institute as a place for a moral discussion on the history and culture of Romania, and its influences on the international community.
Furthermore, the exhibition aims to give visibility to contemporary Roman artists as protagonists of a new and very precious “cultural renaissance” from which the European community takes inspiration.
Artists: Mircea Ciutu http://mirceaciutu.com; Vanessa Gageos (videoarte): http://www.vanessagageos.com; Remus Ilisie (installazione): https://www.bsidewar.org/it/artisti/ilisie-remus/Ilisie Remus.
