Wounded Identity Anca Poterasu Gallery Bucharest

Wounded Identity

Artists: Adelina Ivan, Adriana Jebeleanu, Olivia Mihălțianu, Alex Mirutziu, Pusha Petrov

What is left today, in the age of globalization, of our European identity – here is a disquieting question, which cannot be answered spontaneously. To find an answer, we have to question ourselves and, at the same time, to look at the various data coming from our every-day life and from the contemporary artistic environment. If an identity is defined in relation with the other, with Otherness, then the contemporary society is facing a serious crisis, the result of many fragmented identities. Because of the confrontation with strange and diverse identities, there have been confused, plural, contradictory developments at the global scale, or, sometimes, marginal and subaltern positions have been accepted…

In the totalitarian communist regimes, the artists, with their projects, systematically opposed the erasure of identities and the enforced levelling, militating for the freedom of expression, for the assertion of the individual as such, with their own identity, undistorted under ideological pressure. For the artists in the 1980s generation (who continued to express themselves freely especially after 1990) the body was considered a means of expression charged with raw and even brutal power. The artists researched this topic thoroughly, without avoiding its controversial aspects.

Read the whole text by Ileana Pintilie and view more exhibition photos, here

For Adelina Ivan, what prevails is the feminine identity, characterized by a certain precariousness and whose vulnerability is glimpsed especially in revealing its sexual identity. Built around the female body, this identity is often outlined by its absence, evoked by the clothes in a melancholic longing or by hair extensions which bear the sensual imprint of femininity. Her latest film projects (Left Square, Right Square) bring up the evanescence of the body, seen as an illusory projection, trapped in its own drawing – the two geometric shapes designed by the artist. This evanescence of the body is also highlighted in a ritual of involuntary movements, like lying down, sleeping and waking up in the movie Circling, in which the artist replicates the daily body routines – spectral, out of this world.

Left Square, Right Square

Adelina Ivan
2020
Full HD
16:9

Hello Vera

Adelina Ivan
2020
Full HD
16:9

Circling

Adelina Ivan
2020
Full HD
double channel

Exhibition View / Artists Olivia Mihălțianu and Pusha Petrov

For Pusha Petrov, searching one’s personal identity focuses on the cultural aspects, often under the influence of ethnic aspects. Growing up with a small conservative family of Bulgarians in Banat, the artist started her research inside the closed universe only to later discover an identity that is culturally registered as a genetic code of sorts. Old pieces of costume, interiors of homes that trace family rituals, introduced in a behavioural canon, they have all served her at the beginning and still inform her work, as sources of inspiration. Later on, her research extended over to other contemporary forms of identity, including behaviours (the series where she presents the underlining of pursers Marsupium à main – or of the bike seats).Yet her research, while seeking a different kind of authenticity, led the artist towards appropriating other cultures through empathy and emotion. The hair transfers well this mark of identity as do the different hairstyles that could define certain ethnic groups; weaving hair uveils this specific cultural identity as it is acknowledged in the public space (Privilège). Weaving hair for Black women in Paris introduced the artists in a secret world, with its cultural taboos, with the mistrust and exclusion that the intruders are faced with. Discovering, little by little, these practices and experiencing them on her own hair, are equivalent to an initiation into a different worldview, in which the artists steps carefully by interviewing people who know more about them. These confessional interviews open another cultural world, revealing its intimacies and its sensitivities connected with the African hair weave (Chignon chouchou).

Olivia Mihălțianu‘s work is looking back into the early photographic experiments, failure and success stories, lost images, chemical formulas, or set-up secrets of the working process and the technical evolution behind the portrait, self portrait, up to the nowadays selfie, as a photographic artistic gender. Hippolyte Bayard the author of Le Noyé may have been the first inventor of photography or just an impostor (as some researchers consider), but for certain he was the first to understand and use the true essence of photography as art, as well as the power of the artistic statement in front of a camera. The reference to the Self Portrait as a Drowned Man (Le Noyé) also reinforces the discontent of the artist against the contemporary art market practices and the way the monetary value, prevails the artistic value of the art work and the artist’s effort to create it.

Watch a filmed tour of the installation here

Exhibition View / Olivia Mihălțianu, Self Portrait as a Drowned Artist and The Portrait Studio, 2020 Film still, 4K video loop

Adriana Jebeleanu passionately positioned her work in the midst of these concerns in order to find herself in the midst of life, which she in turn „absorbed” by transposing it in her photographic and video actions. Her artistic practice connected painting, photography, performances enacted directly in front of the audience. After studying painting, she turned towards performance in reaction to the crisis of the language of painting. One of the most significant of her appearances in front of the audiences appears to be I am nothing more than a talking blood stain in which the artist builds a subordinate relation towards painting and pure colours (with a significant meaning for her) – bright red gesturally set on a white canvas which in turn is placed directly on the wall. There is something in her actions, but also in her video films (small recorded actions) a strange power of colours reduced to white, red and black. The visual impact of these pure colours and non-colours fascinates the viewer, who slips, willingly or unwillingly, into her seductive but morbid discourse.

Exhibition View / Artist Adriana Jebeleanu

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Adriana Jebeleanu
2011

Fast Food

Adriana Jebeleanu
2011

Totally Love

Adriana Jebeleanu
2011

Alex Mirutziu is reluctantly seeking for an identity that would define him, which proves to be a fragile, insecure construction first of all due to the precariousness of the human condition. Everyday life, with its natural gestures, can be transformed into a space of resistance, while resistance can in turn become a policy of identity. Rising and falling on/off a podium, ambition and failure – like the lesson offered by the fashion show in Feeding the horses of all heroes – raises the issue of body failure, which stands next to the ”failure” exercises of Bruce Nauman (Failing to Levitate in the Studio). Thus, dysfunction once again demonstrates the vulnerability of the human body.

Feeding the Horses of all Heroes, 2010, SD video recording of performance at Accademia di Romania in Roma, 27’11”

Self Portrait as a Drowned Artist and The Portrait Studio

Olivia Mihălțianu
2020
photographic salt print on 50% cotton paper
(9 x 12 cm) stainless steel, brass, acrylic glass, plexiglass, 4K video loop, studio lights, dark room red light bulb, dimensions variable

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