Artists: : Apparatus 22, Alex Bodea, Ștefan Botez, Patrick Brăila, Cornel Brudașcu, Irina Bujor, Liviu Bulea, Andrei Chintilă, Lorena Cocioni, Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu, Georgiana Dobre & Kjersti Vetterstad, Paul Dunca / Paula Dunker, Julio Elvisey Pisică, Vergine Santa Frida, Alex Horghidan, Limba semnelor de întrebare / The Language of Question Marks, Luca Istodor, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Katja Lee Eliad, Mihai Lukács, Mihai Mihalcea, Alex Mirutziu, Sebastian Moldovan, Paul Mureșan, Vasile Mureșan (Murivale), Ioana Nemeș, Mircea Nicolae, Adrian Oncu, Sorin Oncu, Ileana Pașcalău, Manuel Pelmuș, Adina Pintilie, Veda Popovici, Lea Rasovszky, Flaviu Rogojan, Miron Schmückle, Aris Tureac, Mihaela Vasiliu (Chlorys).
Title: YOU FEEL ∼ AND DRIFT ∼ AND SING
Venue: Combinatul Fondului Plastic, Bucharest
Curators: KILOBASE BUCHAREST – Dragoș Olea (also TRIUMF AMIRIA’s visual art curator) and Sandra Demetrescu (also chief curator at MNAC)
Photos: Serioja Bocsok
TRIUMF AMIRIA. The Museum of Queer Culture [?] in partnership with The National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), has the pleasure to present the series of statement exhibitions YOU FEEL ~ AND DRIFT ~ AND SING in a tentacular approach in four art venues in Bucharest: Combinatul Fondului Plastic, Suprainfinit Gallery, Spatiul THE INSTITUTE, SWITCH LAB
YOU FEEL ~ AND DRIFT ~ AND SING exhibitions include more than 100 works and work series by 38 artists and artist collectives and represents the tangible result of research into the queer artistic practices happening in Romania since 2001. The exhibition marks the two decades passed since the landmark repeal of Article 200 of the Penal Code of Romania in 2001 which criminalized same sex relationships.
The curatorial duo KILOBASE BUCHAREST – Dragoș Olea (also TRIUMF AMIRIA’s visual art curator) and Sandra Demetrescu (also chief curator at MNAC) – selected works created by queer artists, dealing with queer themes or meant to disrupt the status quo and enable change, to queer the future in resonance with the fluid spirit of TRIUMF AMIRIA.
- Venue 1 / Main exhibition
YOU FEEL ~ AND DRIFT ~ AND SING (1 – 245) at Combinatul Fondului Plastic
The exhibition can be navigated in multiple ways, for example:
*) a multidimensional puzzle in which 245 queer narratives coexist and diffuse one into another under the reigning aspects of love, empathy and the critical spirit empowered at the level of the hyperbolic
*) an imperatively necessary ~ fragile ~ precious forum resisting restrictive definitions of scope, where the boundaries between the public space (the agora) and the private worlds become blurred thanks to the adventurous ~ magical ~ surprising exhibition layout created together with the architect Laura Paraschiv / CIRCA 1703 – 3071
*) a nonlinear expected ~ unexpected ~ immersive retrospective account of two decades or queer artistic production in Romania. No themes have been imposed beforehand, but they emerged following in-depth research and conversations with the artists.
*) A revelry-free celebration in which we invite you to feel ~ drift ~ sing among an abundance of queer artistic voices chanting about identity, desire, trauma, ecology, healing rituals, a daring and progressive future, differences, stigmatum, racism, the contemporary art system, the reclaim of public spaces, the splitting off definitions and oppressive norms, the language and neologisms of an extended vocabulary, fluidity and generosity.
“Placing an exhibition (or, better said, a series of exhibitions of the likes of YOU FEEL ~ AND DRIFT ~ AND SING) in an ‘in-between’ state – fluid, myria-narrative and tentacular – has meant deep collaboration with numerous artistic communities while exploring answers to a few questions: Who are, or who should be, the invited artists given the budget constraint of 30 artistic openings? How can we enable a generous, nuanced and surprising spectrum of queer or queering work in the exhibition? How can we keep a constructive equilibrium between established voices which have consistently been contributing to the queer discourse in Romania and internationally in the two decades in scope, and more recent, emerging voices, with various gender expressions etc?” – explain the members of KILOBASE BUCHAREST.
