e-mail this page
Printer Friendly Version

University extends reach of Romanian artists

Enjoying their relatively new-found freedom after decades of repression, Romanian artists are finally getting a chance to display their talents, and Sacramento State will help them extend their exposure with an art exhibit that kicks off the fall semester.

“Traces: Contemporary Romanian Art” will run Sept. 2 through Oct. 3 at the Robert Else Gallery in Kadema Hall. Gallery hours are noon to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. A reception will be held 6-8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 8. Three of the artists—Suzana Dan, Ana Banica and Carmen Iovitu—will participate in an artists’ panel at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 11, in Kadema 145 and Cristian Nemescu’s film California Dreamin’ will be screened at 6 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 25, also in Kadema 145.

This is the first exhibition of Romanian artwork in Northern California, says Sacramento State professor and exhibit co-curator Elaine O’Brien.

The artists will explore issues of location, memory and identity in a show featuring more than 50 pieces, some displayed individually and others part of larger installations, in a variety of forms—painting, photography, video, and hand-sewn projects.

Under the 24-year regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania was a closed society. The artists in the “Traces” exhibit have come of age since his overthrow and execution in 1989. They don’t identify with the traditional Romania of their grandparents or with the Romania of the communist era and so are creating new themes of what it means to be Romanian, O’Brien says.

And yet the work also speaks to the world at large.

One of the artists, Mirela Ivanciu, digitally modifies landscapes, inserting other photos and art that reference other times, places and memories, O’Brien says. She compares the work to the experience of parents taking their children to a place the adults visited when they were young. The parents not only experience the moment, but also overlay the situation with their own childhood memories. “Ivanciu’s poetics merge the present and the past,” O’Brien says. “It’s really a very universal message. It’s not Romanian per se.”

Other participating artists are Ana Banica, Gabriela Boiangiu, Rozalinda Borcila, Emanuel Borcescu, Care Cutare, Cozo, Suzana Dan, Gorzo, Stela Lie, Ioana Marinescu, Aurelia Mihai, Gili Mocanu, Vlad Nanca, Lila Passima and Delia Popa.

The exhibition is co-curated by Ann Albritton, Mirela Ivanciu and Carmen Iovitu.

Even though they didn’t directly experience the repressive policies of Ceausescu, the artists do illustrate a lingering effect of his regime. O’Brien says the young Romanian artists are more self-conscious of the nation’s new-found freedoms, and it shows in their work.

“I think they’re determined to exercise their freedom of expression and say what they want to say with their art. They are also relatively free of art market motives,” O’Brien says. “There’s a wonderfully youthful beauty to this art that does not wag its tale, sit up or beg.”

This is the second year in a row O’Brien has looked to Eastern Europe for the department’s first exhibit. She says that’s primarily coincidental, although she is interested in Eastern European art because of its lack of worldwide exposure and because the artists have found ways to navigate between meaning and aesthetics, the personal and the political. “This is art people don’t know enough about,” she says. “It has something to say and a way of saying it that is exemplary and needs to be brought into local awareness.”

The exhibition wouldn’t be possible without the support of Associated Students, Inc. and the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York covered travel costs for the artists, O’Brien says.