Oh Boy, It’s a Girl! A short history of artists’ books made by female artists

With a title inspired by the iconic museum exhibition Oh boy, it’s a girl! Feminismen in der Kunst organized by Hedwig Saxenhuber and Astrid Wege at the Kunstverein München in 1994 – a milestone in the transdisciplinary approaches on this topic – the current exhibition offers a polyphonic view of the gender issue through the transgressive practice of some women artists who have worked – some occasionally, others mainly – with printed matter: Hanne Darboven, Sophie Calle, Marianne Wex, Nancy Spero, Carmen Winant, Mariken Wessels, Anne Collier, Louise Bourgeois, Annette Messager, Francesca Woodman, Justine Kurland, Katrien de Blauwer, and Mirella Bentivoglio, among others.

On the Commoning Practice of Cultivating Abundance

Åsa Sonjasdotter addresses issues of ecological justice and activist-agricultural engagement in an artistic investigation dedicated to the participatory condition of cultivating agricultural abundance. Her film, Cultivating Abundance (2022), constituted as an open manifesto dedicated to the revival of collaborative farming methods, documents the critical position of farmers in Sweden towards the legislative demands for standardization of local agricultural production that impose conditions for stabilization and uniformity of grain plantation variety. Working with local farmers, such as Hans Larsson from Fulltofta, Sweden, but also with various institutions such as the Swedish Farmers' Association, Allkorn (allkorn.se), or the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Alnarp, Åsa Sonjasdotter observes how the law works against nature by conditioning farmers to produce distinct but stable and uniform plant organisms.

WASTED

With the exponential development of the consumer market, marketing strategies and advertisements have become more and more creative and novel, to the point where they have reached the limit of aggressive to achieve their purpose. Today, marketing is so intense in the online environment that its presence is barely felt in its physical version (print), but this existence is not at all negligible.

Under Constriction

The exhibition project suggested by Radu Carnariu extends his long-standing interest in exploring the increasingly unequal distribution of the planet's wealth and resources under the impact of the extractivist-colonial economic system that globalization, in the form in which it was configured after 1990, continued to support, contributing decisively to the current planetary climate crisis.

În câteva cuvinte

De câte cuvinte ai nevoie ca să spui un adevăr esențial?

Fragmentați în mii de cioburi, crâmpeie de informație incertă și gratificări instante, înaintând ca prin nămol între halucinații, trepanații, conspirații, zvonuri și născociri, operațiuni sub steag fals, sfârșituri ale istoriei și realizări bruște că totul se repetă, realități schizo-paranoide pe care nici nu ni le-am fi putut imagina acum un an, o lună, o secundă, rar ne mai oprim să ne punem vreuna dintre marile întrebări care ne țineau treji nopțile — pe când lumea încă nu intrase în fierbere, criză și singularitate.

LEVANT

Carried by the passion for Catalan art, medieval miniatures and Byzantine lines, the artist Sorin Ilfoveanu stopped in the Levant. A Levant that he did not see, did not touch, but that he felt. He caught its essence in the colour of old paper and the smell of inks. The medieval intrigues found in literature and history fascinated the artist and challenged him to feel and outline the atmosphere of the Levant. He expressed it through a cursive and undulating line that tells the story of harsh, bloody, erotic or tender scenes.

CROSS THE LAKE IN A SILVER PLATE

Artista Miruna Radovici în colaborare cu Roxana Morar și Sara Tayari pornesc într-un proces explorativ ce are ca subiect apa și reîntoarcerea către raportul pur, ancestral dintre om și apă. Fără a căuta soluții ecologice sau răspunsuri la întrebări legate de mediu și transformările acestuia, cele trei artiste propun o modalitate imersivă de a crea o experiență vizuală originală precum și o implicare senzorială autentică.

On Olt river – a journey with Ștefan Câlția

The journey is a search, an endeavor of the one who wants to reach or become. The pace of the traveller differs according to their destination. The length of the traveller's step is the intensity of their desire. But when you travel by water? Then the step turns into floating.

SOUNDS LIKE A BOOK

De la începuturile sale, Sounds like a Book s-a concentrat pe conversia sunetului într-o carte, configurându-se, în comunitatea românească, ca prima încercare de a aduce aceste două medii împreună.Sounds like a book este o platformă de book making și self-publishing, care se adresează celor interesați de carte ca un mediu de expresie artistică. După cum sugerează numele ales, tema principală este reprezentarea vizuală a sunetului.

Objects of restauration

Heritage restoration also consists of gestures and actions related to education. The recovery of a smithy from the village of Apața, relocated to the village of Șona and rechristened "Lazarus' smithy", a concrete thing, carried out together with the villagers as an assumed exercise of reviving some social ties, in analogy with the resurrected Lazarus. A blacksmith needs an anvil and a hammer, the rest of the tools, dozens or maybe hundreds, and he can make them himself in the forge according to his needs, the artist tells some visitors of the forge, emphasizing the ideas of craft and craftsmanship.