Kunsthalle Bega presents ”HeartBeat 20” - new entries in The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest

HEARTBEAT 20 / PULS 20

May 14 - July 11, 2021

Artists:

2 META, Dan Acostioaei, Ana Adam, Felix Aftene, Andreea Anghel, Apparatus 22, Cătălin Bădărău, Dragoş Bădiţă, Liliana Basarab, Ioana Bătrânu, Matei Bejenaru, Biroul de Cercetări Melodramatice (Irina Gheorghe & Alina Popa), Răzvan Boar, Andreea-Lorena Bojenoiu, Bogdan Andrei Bordeianu, Irina Botea Bucan, Ștefan Botez, Claudia Brăileanu, Michele Bressan, Cătălin Burcea, Ion Condiescu, Elena Copuzeanu, Ștefan Radu Crețu, Giulia Crețulescu, Larisa Crunțeanu, Cristina David, Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu, Daniel Djamo, Megan Dominescu, Arantxa Etcheverria, Belu Simion Făinaru, Irina Gheorghe, Dani Ghercă, Bogdan Gîrbovan, Ana Golici, Nicolae Golici, Daniel Gontz, Teodor Graur, Dragoș Hanciu, Dorina Horătău, Gheorghe Ilea, Adelina Ivan, Mihaela Kavdanska, Iosif Király, Aurora Király, Kund Kopacz, Stela Lie, Petru Lucaci, Dragoș Lumpan, Maria Manolescu, Ana-Maria Micu, Mihai Mihalcea, Olivia Mihălțianu, Alex Mirutziu, Gili Mocanu, Patricia Moroșan, Ciprian Mureșan, Sorin Neamțu, Maurice Mircea Novac, Alexandru Păsat, Cosmin Paulescu, Romelo Pervolovici, Delia Popa, Marilena Preda Sânc, Cristian Răduță, Sandu-Eugen Raportoru, Carmen Rasovszky, Gheorghe Rasovszky, Lea Rasovszky, Bogdan Rața, Ioana Sisea, Larisa Sitar, Alexandru Solomon, Mircea Stănescu, Liviu Stoicoviciu, Patricia Teodorescu, Dan Vezentan, Bogdan Vlăduță, Dilmana Yordanova, Mihai Zgondoiu, Marian Zidaru, Victoria Zidaru

Curator:

Călin Dan

Opening: 14 May 2021, between 6pm - 9pm

Kunsthalle Bega

Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 12pm – 6pm
Circumvalațiunii 10, Timișoara  (RO)

kunsthallebega.ro

[EN] Kunsthalle Bega and National Museum of Contemporary Art present ”HEARTBEAT 20” (new entries in the MNAC collections)

The National Museum of Contemporary Art – MNAC Bucharest is 20 years old. Twenty years are 20 heartbeats in the body of a young Museum. Struggling for an independent growth, MNAC had to feed its burgeoning identity with the heavy materials of a ready-made collection, inherited from times when concepts like contemporary and collecting had altogether a different meaning. In a few cautious steps, MNAC enlarged its inventory, most recently last year, when an important number of pieces (180 precisely) were added by purchase to an on-going narrative about the visual culture produced here.

A lot can be said about this assembly of works, about the almost miraculous ways in which they manage to illustrate 50 years of local art production, about the fascinating diversity of personalities united through the inspirational effort made by a jury of specialists with high standing, and with a deep knowledge about the recent history of Romania. The session of art acquisitions organised by MNAC in 2020, with the generous support of the Ministry of Culture, has not been just a mechanism of cultural politics. Through the synergy between an enthusiastic art scene (awaiting for 12 years this moment of recognition), and the expertise of the specialists within and around the museum, a remarkable act of collective curatorship has been taking place. The outcome is this exhibition, opened at the MNAC venue in Bucharest under the name ”12 Years After. A Survey of Romanian Art in 180 Works”, and now at Kunsthalle Bega under a more adequate title: ”HeartBeat 20”.

This has been probably the most naturally growing curatorial discourse in the short history of MNAC. ”HeartBeat 20” is actually an organism, resulting from living processes of interaction, and its move around the country, started inspirationally with this invitation at Kunsthalle Bega, is proof of it.

[RO] Kunsthalle Bega și Muzeul Național de Artă Contemporană prezintă ”PULS 20” (noi intrări în colecția MNAC)

Muzeul Național de Artă Contemporană – MNAC București împlinește 20 de ani. Douăzeci de ani sunt ca 20 de zvâcniri de puls în corpul unui muzeu tânăr. Căutând calea dezvoltării autonome, MNAC a trebuit să își hrănească identitatea cu materia grea a unei colecții moștenite de-a gata din timpuri când cuvintele contemporan și colecție aveau sensuri cu totul diferite. În câțiva pași precauți, MNAC și-a extins inventarul, mai cu seamă anul trecut, când un număr important de titluri (180 mai precis) au fost adăugate prin achiziție narațiunii în evoluție a culturii vizuale produse aici.

Se pot spune multe despre acest corpus de lucrări, despre felul aproape miraculos în care el reușește să ilustreze 50 de ani de producție artistică locală, despre fascinanta diversitate a personalităților reunite prin efortul remarcabil al unui juriu de specialiști cu o cunoaștere profundă a istoriei recente a artelor din România. Sesiunea de achiziții organizată de către MNAC în 2020, cu generosul sprijin al Ministerului Culturii, nu a fost doar un mecanism de politici culturale. Prin sinergia dintre o scenă artistică entuziastă (care a așteptat 12 ani acest moment de recunoaștere) și competența specialiștilor din muzeu și din jurul acestuia s-a născut un remarcabil act de curatoriat colectiv. Rezultatul este această expoziție, deschisă la sediul MNAC sub titlul ”După doisprezece ani. Producția artistică din România în 180 de lucrări”, și prezentată acum la Kunsthalle Bega sub un titlu mai adecvat: ”Puls 20”.

Discursul curatorial din care s-a născut ”Puls 20” a fost unul organic, expoziția dezvoltându-se firesc, asemenea unei ființe vii, prin acțiuni și re-acțiuni, prin provocări și răspunsuri, printr-o continuitate procesuală fără precedent. Cel mai spontan proiect curatorial al Muzeului Național de Artă Contemporană își începe un bine meritat traseu național prin această generoasă invitație la Kunsthalle Bega.

***

Membrii juriului / Members of the jury

1. Horia AVRAM (președinte, Asociația Internațională a Criticilor de Artă (AICA), filiala România / President, International Association of Art Critics (AICA), Romanian branch)

2. Cătălin DAVIDESCU (curator, critic de artă / Curator, art critic)

3. Anca MIHULEȚ (curator, critic de artă / Curator, art critic)

4. Ruxandra DEMETRESCU (director, Școala Doctorală, UNArte, București / Director, Doctoral School, National University of Arts, Bucharest)

5. Zoran ERIĆ - curator șef, Muzeul de Artă Contemporană, Belgrad (membru în Consiliul Științific MNAC) / Chief curator, Belgrade Museum of Contemporary Art – MoCAB (member of the MNAC Scientific Council)

6. Cătălin GHEORGHE (conf. univ. dr., Universitatea Națională de Arte „George Enescu”, Iași / Professor, "George Enescu" National Arts University, Iași)

7. Diana MARINCU (director artistic, fundația Art Encounters, Timișoara / Artistic director, Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara)

8. Frances MORRIS - director, Tate Modern, Londra (membru în Consiliul Științific MNAC) / Director, Tate Modern, London (member of the MNAC Scientific Council)

9. Irina RADU (șef secție Colecții-Conservare, MNAC / Head of the Collections, MNAC)

10. Mara-Victoria RAȚIU - prorector, Universitatea de Artă și Design, Cluj-Napoca (membru în Consiliul Științific MNAC) / Prorector, Arts and Design University, Cluj-Napoca (member of the MNAC Scientific Council)

11. Andrei SICLODI - director, Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen (membru în Consiliul Științific MNAC) / Director, Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen (member of the MNAC Scientific Council)

From March 4th, "The Meaning of Sculpture" travels from Kunsthalle Bega Timisoara to Bucharest Sector 1 Gallery

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Foto: Alex Mirutziu

THE MEANING OF SCULPTURE / SENSUL SCULPTURII

March 04 - April 20, 2021

Artists:

Apor – Nimbert Ambrus, Dona Arnakis, Rudolf Bone, Teodor Graur, Oláh Gyárfás, Roxana Ionescu, Adi Matei, Alex Mirutziu, Vlad Nancă, Mihai Olos, Andrei Pituț, Bogdan Rața, Patricia Teodorescu, Ion Toderașcu, Napoleon Tiron, Casandra Vidrighin

Curator:

Liviana Dan

Opening: Thursday, 4 March 2021, from 15:00-21:00

Sector 1 Gallery

29, Baiculesti Street, 013193, Bucharest

Phone: +40744631631

[EN] “The Meaning of Sculpture” / Kunsthalle Bega Timisoara travels.

From March 4th, it becomes “The Meaning of Sculpture” / Bucharest Sector 1 Gallery. At Kunsthalle Bega, the visual evidence focused on conceptualism and the discomfort of sculpture was accepted. It was also accepted the contamination of the sculpture by the installation and the fall of some myths - the myth of the pedestal, the myth of the material ... The sculpture was evaluated according to aesthetic criteria - tactility, opticality, active sensitivity… At Sector 1 Gallery, the aesthetic is pop-baroque, between crossover and a special seduction, using constructivism and minimalism. In terms of installation, the sculpture has a dramatic, immediate impact. There is a reinvestment in the object, which is neither solid nor monumental. Everyday life, nature, planetary life, fragility and ephemerality receive political dimensions. Fantasy becomes a fascinating process of liberation.

“Sculpture exhibitions are defined by their style. Style goes beyond the calm and tranquility of tradition, especially today when the term 'sculpture' defines so many different things. There are two theoretical approaches that might ease the tension and extravagance of contemporary sculpture. An open, straightforward, simple, linear sculpture turns into a systematic theory evaluated according to aesthetic criteria. The path belongs to Herbert Reed, Clement Greenberg, Krauss moment and Richard Serra's entourage. Serra comes with a creative ambition – practice before theory, but not against it. Or a sculpture of empathic interplay between content and context. In the logic of possibilities and social implications / Joseph Beuys / of relational aesthetics / Nicholas Bourriaud / or of relational antagonism / Clair Bishop /. From 'expanded field' to 'exploded field' from 'monumental' to 'momentary'. Both approaches try to redefine 'sculpture' a term that seems a bit old-fashioned, even a bit obscure. Regardless of the theoretical approach, the meaning of sculpture seems to be the representation of volume and weight with a drawing determined structure. A structure compelling an encounter between material and thought. The usual art materials - stone, wood, metal - are replaced by more ephemeral materials - plastic, glass, paper, - or materials produced by machines - textile textures, wires. Established practices like chiseling and modeling are left behind to make way for a constructed or assembled form. The transient quality of the materials and the subversiveness of the deconstruction lead to installations, design and architecture. Sculpture as an installation has an immediate, dramatic impact. The pedestal is either completely integrated, absorbed or abandoned. Photography, collage, film, light are no longer just echoes of post-production. It conveys the ephemeral and the fragility of life, but also the truth. Our life and the planet’s life are fragile, uncertain. Sculpture uses the flexibility of pop-baroque aesthetic as a metaphorical garden of society, as a domestic experience. Sculpture becomes part of our daily lives, getting to our house, our balcony. We reinvest in object saving the everydayness, the ecology, the nature, the world” - Liviana Dan, curator.

[RO] “Sensul sculpturii” / Kunsthalle Bega Timișoara călătorește.

Din 4 martie 2021 devine “Sensul sculpturii” / Galeria Sector 1 București. La Kunsthalle Bega evidența vizuală se concentra pe conceptualism și se accepta disconfortul sculpturii. Se accepta contaminarea sculpturii de către instalație și căderea unor mituri / mitul soclului, mitul materialului...Sculptura era evaluată după criterii estetice / tactilitate, opticalitate, sensibilitate activă... La Galeria Sector 1 estetica este post - barocă între crossover și o seducție specială, folosind constructivismul și minimalismul. În termenii instalației, sculptura are un impact dramatic, imediat. Există o reinvestire în obiect, care nu mai este nici solid, nici monumental. Cotidianul, natura, viața planetei, fragilitatea și efemeritatea primesc dimensiuni politice. Fantezia devine un fascinant proces de eliberare.

“Expozițiile despre sculptură sunt explicate prin stilul lor. Stilul depășește calmul și liniștea tradiției mai ales că în ultimul timp lucrări tot mai surprinzătoare se numesc sculptură. Există două agende teoretice care pot relaxa tensiunile și extravaganța sculpturii contemporane. O sculptură deschisă, directă, simplă, lineară devine o teorie sistematică evaluată după criterii estetice. Parcursul este Herbert Reed, Clement Greenberg, momentul Krauss, anturajul lui Richard Serra. Serra cu un amendament - practica înaintea teoriei, dar nu împotriva ei. Sau o sculptură de mixaj empatic între conținut și context. În logica posibilităților și implicațiilor sociale / Joseph Beuys / a esteticii relaționale / Nicolas Bourriaud / ori a antagonismului relațional / Clair Bishop /. De la 'câmp expandat' la 'câmp exploatat' de la 'monumental' la 'momentan'. Ambele agende încearcă să salveze 'sculptura' un termen devenit puțin obosit, chiar puțin obscur. Indiferent de agenda teoretică sensul sculpturii pare volumul și ponderabilitatea cu o structură determinată prin desen. Structura care forțează o confruntare între materiale și gândire. Materialele recunoscute de arta - piatra, lemnul, metalul - sunt înlocuite de materiale efemere - plastic, sticla, hârtie - ori de materiale făcute de mașini - texturi textile, cabluri...Practicile familiare cioplitul si modelajul sunt abandonate în favoarea unei forme construite ori asamblate. Efemeritatea materialelor și subversiunea deconstrucției duc ușor spre instalație, design, arhitectura. Sculptura în termenii instalației are un impact dramatic, imediat. Soclul a fost total integrat, absorbit ori abandonat. Fotografia, colajul, filmul, lumina nu mai sunt doar ecouri ale post producției. Se folosește efemeritatea și fragilitatea vieții, dar și adevărul. Viața și viața planetei sunt fragile, nesigure. Sculptura se folosește de flexibilitatea esteticii pop baroce ca de o gradină metaforă a societății, ca de o experiență domestică. Sculptura devine cotidiana ajunge în casa ta, pe terasa ta. Reinvestești în obiect salvând cotidianul, ecologia, natura, lumea” - Liviana Dan, curator.

"The Meaning of Sculpture" exhibition in focus on the November issue of ELLE Magazine Romania

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The Meaning of Sculpture @ Kunsthalle Bega

[EN] Sculptures can be impeccable sculptures suggested by nature. Yet, as an intellectual exercise, reality has never stimulated such a scenario. For a long time, sculptures have functioned between a civic function and a sacred vocation. Marble, monument, power, politics. You could see the sculpture as an image of the plan – the structure – elevation. Sculptures had to stand up against the language, they had to cope with a metaphorical and image criticism. Each handicap had to be transformed into an advantage.

Considered literary, limited and primitive, the sculpture aims to have a complex role in the figurative, modern and minimalist ideas and fantasies.

The paradigm of sculptures – too much materiality, too much corporality, too much ambiguity – has provided and supported a lot of thoughts regarding the installation of some theories referring to sculpture.

The visual is replaced by the tactile as tactility has become a systematic theory evaluated by means of esthetic criteria. / Herbert Reed / The incorporation of the optical spirit / Clement Greenberg / develops the open, linear, optical sculpture which is not affected by pictorial effects.

Sculptures transcend in materiality in order to offer a pure experience.

The Krauss / Rosalind Krauss moment/ considers the sculpture in an expanded field, an independent object of art directly connected with the space, the environment and the assemblage itself.

The dissolution of the notion of sculpture, the contamination of the sculpture with the installation, the domination of the organic materials double the visual experience with a sensorial one. / Alex Potts / The sculptural imagination determines the re-interpretation of spaces, outskirts – center, and disturbs the reason of bi-dimensional images. / Julie Reiss /

The radical transformation is completed by several theorist artists obsessed by sculpture such as Robert Smithson, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra. How can we define the long history of sculpture from a contemporary viewpoint? The myths regarding marble collapses. The autonomy of forms and the commitment of matters are contaminated by the rules of installation. The two positions, the anti-monument and the anti-pedestal, become recurrent topics. Each material can be replaced with another material without changing the intention.

Recently, there are more and more surprising works seen as sculptures: immense photos and video films documenting the ocean, the vegetation, the ice, the human body, the molecules, the silver plants, the clouds, the tunnels of light, and the performance posting up the technical grid, which is provided with theatrical sensibility…

Is there a certain meaning? Is there a visual prejudice?

Sculptures are connected to their own truth.

[RO] Sculptura poate fi sculptură impecabilă propusă de natură. Dar ca exercițiu intelectual, realitatea nu favorizează niciodată un astfel de scenariu. Sculptura a funcționat mult timp între funcția civică și vocația sacră. Marmură, monument, putere, politică. Vedeai sculptura ca pe o imagine planul – structura – elevația. Sculptura trebuia să reziste limbajului, trebuia să reziste unei critici metaforice și de imagine. Fiecare handicap trebuia transformat într-un avantaj.

Considerată literară, limitată, primitivă sculptura ajunge să dețină un rol complex în ideile și fanteziile figurative, moderne, minimaliste.

Paradigma sculpturii – prea multă materialitate, prea multă corporalitate, prea multă ambiguitate a oferit și a susținut multe gânduri pentru instalarea unor teorii despre sculptură.

Vizualul este înlocuit de tactil. Tactilitatea devenind o teorie sistematică evaluată după criterii estetice. / Herbert Reed / Incorporarea spiritului optic / Clement Greenberg / dezvoltă sculptura deschisă, lineară, optică, neafectată de efecte picturale.

Sculptura transcende în materialitate pentru a oferi o experiență pură. Momentul Krauss / Rosalind Krauss / consideră sculptura un câmp expandat, un obiect de artă independent în relație directă cu spațiul, mediul și asamblajul în sine. Disoluția noțiunii de sculptură, contaminarea sculpturii cu instalația, dominația materialelor organice dublează experiența vizuală cu una senzorială. / Alex Potts / Imaginația sculpturală determină re-interpretarea spațiilor-margine-centru și disturbă logica imaginii bidimensionale. / Julie Reiss /

Transformarea radicală este făcută de câțiva artiști teoreticieni obsedați de sculptură Robert Smithson, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman și Richard Serra. Cum poate fi definită într-o manieră contemporană lunga istorie a sculpturii? Cade mitul marmurei. Autonomia formei și angajamentul conținutului sunt contaminate de regulile instalației. Cele două poziții anti monument și anti soclu devin teme recurente. Orice material poate fi înlocuit cu un alt material fără ca intenția să fie schimbată.

În ultimul timp lucrări tot mai surprinzătoare se numesc sculptură: fotografii imense și filme video documentând oceanul, vegetația, gheața, corpul uman, moleculele, plantele din argint, norii și tunelele de lumină și performanța documentând gridul tehnic care primește sensibilitate teatrală…

Există un anume sens? Este un prejudiciu vizual?

Sculptura umblă cu adevărul ei.

THE MEANING OF SCULPTURE / SENSUL SCULPTURII

September 25, 2020 - January 24, 2021

Artists:

APOR – NIMBERT AMBRUS
RUDOLF BONE
NORBERT COSTIN
TEODOR GRAUR
ROXANA IONESCU
ADI MATEI
ALEX MIRUTZIU
VLAD NANCĂ
MIHAI OLOS
ALEXANDRA PIRICI
BOGDAN RAȚA
CRISTIAN RĂDUȚĂ
MIRCEA SPĂTARU
PATRICIA TEODORESCU
NAPOLEON TIRON
CASANDRA VIDRIGHIN

Curator

LIVIANA DAN

Opening: Friday 25th September, between 18 to 21 hours

The exhibition can be accessed from the outer staircase located on the side facing the 700 Square

Kunstahalle Bega

Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 12pm – 6pm
Circumvalațiunii 10, Timișoara  (RO)

kunsthallebega.ro

”ART ENCOUNTERS BIENNIAL 2019: STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY OF NEGOTIATION”, a text by Alex Mirutziu for Contemporary Lynx

Similar to the winds in Herta Muller’s novels (Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, born in Nițchidorf, Timisoara) which take place in and around Timisoara, the winds of change metaphorically embraced by Maria Lind and Anca Rujoiu, the two curators of Timisoara Art Encounters Biennial, blow through borders and edges of visibility and invisibility as Europe’s borderlands are in flux from the shores of the Baltic to the Black Sea and from the peaks of the Carpathians to the Caucasus mountains. As an artist myself, participating in the inaugural edition (2015), and as a visitor in the second one two years later, I couldn’t help but notice the changing wind, blowing in its wings. Since its outset the biennial policies have been hellbent on strengthening the local community with stimulating ideas for a more inclusive and more sustainable future. Since 2015 its founder/collector, Ovidiu Sandor, has been fostering an initiative in partnership with Timisoara City Hall and Timis County Directorate of Culture, among other bodies. What follows is my own interpretation of the works of Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan, Aslan Gaisumov, Walid Raad and Virginia Lupu.

Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan Virginia Lupu

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

The two appointed curators of 2019 Art Encounters Biennial anchored themselves in these shifting “winds” with particular attention to local crafts, publishing and personal collections or forms of self-management, in an overall manner in slow digestion with Romanian consciousness and the biennial’s main public – the city’s inhabitants. More than thirty locations and outlets across the city contain such “winds” in a city that has been at the forefront of innovation and implementation being the first city in the Habsburg Monarchy with street lighting (1760), and the first European city to be lit by electric street lamps and to have the first public lending library with reading room in the Habsburg Empire. Timisoara is a patchwork of cultures and nationalities and common historical or current complicated regional issues, mirrored in introductory word of the Biennial founder and president Ovidiu Sandor, who places Timisoara Art Encounters at the intersection of an experimental art festival and a contemporary art biennial, engaging in meaningful dialogues with the local context.

Aslan Gaisumov Walid Raad

I will not at all survey the entire biennial, nor prioritise any exhibition, rather I will highlight five artworks which stand firm in their poignancy and acuteness – showcasing unblinking, uncompromising realities and milieus. Visiting the Maria Theresia Bastion, a part of the fortification system built by Timisoara’s Habsburg administration, I was immediately captured by the video contribution of the Beirut based artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan (b.1985 Amman) who’s “Walled/Unwalled”, (2018). A single channel video installation unsettled my understanding of borders and their plasmatic properties. In front of the microphone, walled himself off in radio studios, the artist brings forth a recent American court case, in which a military thermal camera provides evidence, invisible from the exterior, where an individual is growing weed inside the house. In another case the artist goes on demonstrating how muons (elementary penetrating particles) similar to electrons are described as allowing “seeing” through the walls of pyramids and shipping containers alike. In retrospect, during the Cold War, Radio Free Europe showed that the iron curtain was not soundproof either. In the Soviet Bloc, in the 1950s, the most advanced acoustic architecture for radiophonic propaganda was developed in East Berlin. At the same time the GDR invented a new kind of prison architecture where the walls were “weaponised” against the inmates through sound, exporting the model not only to the Eastern Bloc, but also to Egypt, Angola and Syria. Last year on the event of the Korean Summit, South Korea has started taking down the loudspeakers along its border with the North, and says it thinks Pyongyang is doing the same thing.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, video still from Walled Unwalled, 2018, single channel video installation, 20 minutes and 4 seconds, exhibition view, Maria Therezia Bastion, Art Encounters 2019, courtesy of the artist, photo credit: Adrian Câtu

Kyllo, the hero in one of the stories in Abu Hamdan’s film, arrested and convicted of illegal weed farming ended up at the Supreme Court after ten years of trials. Finally, the “hot walls” of his apartment unveiling Kyllo’s habit of growing weed became a constitutional problem. Was the heat that passed through the wall into the open air outside, public or private property? Here, as the artists states, the internal fabric of the wall becomes a grey zone between that of the public and private, between technologies used by the military abroad and those used by police at home.

We are witnessing a work which is direct and stubborn in factual information. Within narratives there are renderings of pain, suffering and mutilation expressed in sound transmissions, which as the artist states, takes place within confined spaces – most of the times prison cells or torture rooms; sometimes by a plastic pipe hitting a body, where prisoners can’t see a thing but hear everything. Abu Hamdan has done a great job in his quest of superimposing the audible/perceptible with the inaudible/invisible, reminding us that sound can be more powerful than pain.

***

Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan, The Equitable Principle, 2012 – ongoing, video (recording of the performance), wall drawing, variable dimensions, exhibition view, Maria Therezia Bastion, Art Encounters 2019, courtesy of the artist, photo credit: Adrian Câtu

Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan have worked together since 2011 and their multidisciplinary installation “The Equitable Principle” – an ongoing project that takes a look at borders and property, and property at large in a performative restitution of the economic interests over the Snake Island. Located in the Black Sea, the island was toyed with over centuries by the Ottoman Empire, Romania, The Soviet Union and lastly, Ukraine. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Snake Island became the subject of a major territorial dispute resulting in political deadlock between Romania and Ukraine. In 2009 the Hague tribunal decided to give 80% of the disputed terrain to Romania, alongside the rights to its gas and oil reserves.

The backdrop of this settlement urged the two artists to address the Roman ancient law that literary says: “no one can give what they don’t have,” citing out a 0.509 square metre snow block from the ice-covered area of the Black Sea. The size represented the equivalent surface-unit that each Romanian national would have received, had the territory been divided per capita. Likewise, they are planning to bring 0.892 square metre of solid from Snake Island to Bucharest in similar policy.

***

Aslan Gaisumov, People of No Consequence, 2016, video still, exhibition view, Maria Therezia Bastion, Art Encounters 2019, courtesy of the artist, photo credit: Adrian Câtu

In line with the discrepancy between the nations interests and those of the individual, Aslan Gaisumov (born in Chechnya), in his video projection called “People of No Consequence”, a short video from 2016, has created something of a monument to the historical responsibility and courage of his people.  The artist captured the meeting of a number of survivors of Chechen and Ingush deportation by the Soviet Union to Central Asia during the Second World War. Filmed in a single shot and centrally framed, the work has been produced in the tradition of tableau vivant. No one looks at the camera, no one speaks. The survivors are coming together, and it is in this frame that the film is startling. The slowness with which they all take their seats and the probability of sharing similar traumas can blow one away, even though there is no movement of the camera whatsoever, and no dialogue. The act of 119 survivors sitting in silence brings about not a nostalgic and pitiful feeling, but that of immense presence and dignity these people have in facing their own past and future.

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Walid Raad, Views from outer to inner compartment, 2019, exhibition view, Art Encounters Foundation, Art Encounters 2019, courtesy of the artist, photo credit: Adrian Câtu

The motif of the wall is present once again in one of the works at ISHO House – the seat of Art Encounters Foundation and of the Biennial at large. This old historic house turned into a centre for arts in 2017, and now is the hub and exhibition space of the permanent collections of the Biennial, as well as a meeting point for artists and other cultural workers. It is here that we are torn between what is invisible and what is visible, expanding on the provocation of visual perception of things via graphics, photography and sculpture. Once you enter the exhibition space you are struck by a life-size wallpaper, representing a travesty of space and perspective. Walid Raad, the Lebanese born artist whose oeuvre was shown at Documenta 11 and Venice Biennial,  and who now commutes between NY and Beirut and confronts the viewer in “Views from outer to inner compartment”, presents a silk-like wall print which stands as the entrance into another space, possible via two door frames which invite the viewer to other chambers. Blending calmly with the actual space where it is placed, this work invites one into a masochistic game of wanting to step into the illusion and refraining from it, while at the same time being pulled inexorably in.

In actuality the artist gives a hint on how to interpret his work in a short text which consorts the wallpaper. There we find out that the empty walls seen in the print are possibly a hallucination of an Arab woman, who at the opening of the modern art exhibition (we are not told which modern art museum nor what city) vocally endorses the existence of empty walls despite the masterpieces on show. Her claim that the museum walls are filled with nothing is arguably something to think about when the artist materialises such vision and throws it into the art circuit. Here, Walid Raad returns to the motif of museum walls, something which he has done in numerous past projects. Coming in various scales and shapes, the museum-like walls are constructed while blinking at the Louvre, the Guggenheim, the Whitechapel Gallery and other institutions with which he engages. Accompanying the walls are the stories of those who, for mysterious reasons, cannot enter the institutions, nor find the seemingly full walls to be empty inside, along with museum objects which morph into something else.

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Virginia Lupu – Molibdomanție – performance, Kunsthalle Bega 2019

Coming to terms with who we are and finding ways to understand the other are the main themes inspiring the work of a Romanian artist Virginia Lupu, whose works are shown at Banat Museum. Quite unique among her fellow Romanian artists, she is an inside player. She has to get into particular entourages and alternative cultures to out thereafter something which is luminous, and at the same time – dark. This time, images of witches are her thing, and particularly the depictions of witch-hunt and witchcraft. The latter is a popular practice in Romania with a long history of stereotypical representation. It stimulates fantasies in literature, cinema and television, it draws attention across mass media from high-ranking politicians, to various celebrities and to the general public. Virginia Lupu’s photographs challenge this representation which gained currency in media and public discourse. Drawing on her own interest in esoteric practices as well as in marginalised communities, Virginia Lupu has been working with a family of witches of Roma origins. Lupu follows them during various rituals at home, outdoors in the nature, and on the street, carving out a performative space for self-representation. She captures the nuances of their world from the transformation of the domestic space into a site of female empowerment; to the adaptation of magic rites to contemporary technology; to the entanglement between the urban landscape and natural environment; to the contrast between the social stigma and their financial independence. In the context of the 2019 Art Encounters Biennial, the selection of photographs focuses on a collective portrayal of female witches and the power and beauty that emanates from a communal practice.

Virginia Lupu is also a part of a massive exhibition at the newly opened Kunsthalle Bega, “Lay me Down Across the Lines” – curated by Valentina Iancu. Here Virginia Lupu performs a kind of a spiritual ritual herself, with the help of a spoon in which hot tin metal placed in water on top of someone’s head can dissipate fear. The aftermath of this cleansing is absolutely magnificent. The metal takes shapes resembling nuclear explosions, snow-like particles or sea creatures. Seeing one’s fear materialised in such a manner is unsettlingly pleasurable, with the risk of being tossed around by strangers and maybe even bought, nevertheless enriching its conceptual potential and nuance.

Concerned with representational fidelity to the world out there, this year’s edition of Art Encounters Biennial is more of a mirror to ourselves, one that needs constant cleaning in hope of freeing us from its imprisonment.

Written by Alex Mirutziu

Edited by Paulina Prońko