MEMORY AS VISION
The exhibition’s premise is represented by the celebrations dedicated to the Centenary of Romania. The concept of the exhibition as well as the curatorial strategies are conceived in the context in which different forms of celebrating this event tend to focus exclusively on the past and to put a special emphasis on traditions and national identity. However, in this project we have assumed that the year 1918 can be seen also as a crucial moment in the crystallization of modernity and the foundational moment of the artistic avant-gardes. It is precisely this direction dedicated to recovering the innovative discourses, the exploratory efforts and artistic experiments of the recent centennial history that articulated the construction of this exhibition.
The project is therefore a way to understand and internalize the past, but also a challenge to reflect via various artistic discourses on the dimensions of the present and the transformations that history engages prospectively. The way the artists selected in this exhibition relate to the history of the past 100 years vary from the critical commentary on the demonetization of major cultural and identity landmarks, to the subjective instrumentalization of collective memory; from the symbolic reference to the past and memory, to the self-referential understanding of history.
The selection of the 24 artists and groups in the exhibition reflects equally the history and diversity of modern Romania. The artists represent all the historical provinces, including the Republic of Moldova and the diaspora. The exhibition brings together artists from all generations and representatives of ethnic minorities in the Romanian space. The works cover a wide range of means of expression, from painting, to installation and video.
Thus, by problematizing history as an imaginative exercise, the exhibition proposes a discourse – one that is obviously incomplete and subjective – about the prospective value of memory.
Curator: Horea Avram
Asistent Curator: Georgiana But
The project “Memory as Vision” was organized by Cluj Cultural Centre, with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and National Identity, Romania, within the Centenary programme.
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INTRO
After 1989, but especially in the last 10 years, approximately 5 million romanians left Romania. Many of them, although "captives" of a normality situation, still think to return in their country, being tributaries of a culture in which they were born.
At the same time, those who have not left can not find the necessary comfort here, but if they are looking for it somewhere else, they are convinced that should to give up many things. Here it is the "umbilical cord" with which some of them are fatally linked to the motherland.
"Romanian Tie" is an assemblage, an installation, that treats ironically the identifying signs of a community in a quasi-permanent state of crisis.
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