Alexandra Croitoru - Presentation and discussion with Cristian Nae
tranzit.ro/ Iași
Al. Lăpușneanu St. 7-9
Friday, 14 August, 7:30 pm.
tranzit.ro/ Iași invites you to take part on Friday, August 14, in the presentation of the research carried out by Alexandra Croitoru on the cult of Brâncuşi in Romania, in the shape of a discussion with Cristian Nae. The presentation is part of the art residency undertaken by Alexandra at tranzit.ro/ Iași in August 2015.
Throughout her residency, Alexandra Croitoru will work together with Cristian Nae on editing the artist book Brâncuși. O viață veșnică / An afterlife, which will be published this autumn by Salonul de proiecte in collaboration with IDEA Publishing, with the financial support of AFCN and of the Plan B Foundation.
"The research I started in 2009 focuses on the cult of Brâncuşi in Romania, developing in the direction of the connection between the artist and the national discourse, tracking down the birth of the legend, how the myth became established, how the cult materialised. The research is not exactly an interpretation of Constantin Brâncuşi's life and work, but instead an analysis of the national representativity of the artist the way it is reflected in specialist literature, in literary fiction, in governmental, commercial and advertising strategies, or in crusades such as that concerning the repatriation of the artist's remains. The idea is to outline the cultural, historical, political and social background that made possible the propagation of this cult, debating its errors of judgement, in the artistic context as well as in the broader context of today's Romanian society. I believe it is extremely important to maintain a critical attitude and to always question the social and political context in which we are active; I hope that this research has opened an avenue for perceiving Brâncuși in a more complex manner, beyond the specificities of art history, as a symbolic capital exploited by various social actors. Moreover, I hope that this type of research can become an instrument for observing the ways in which cultural production in general is instrumentalised in today's discourses about capital and power." (Alexandra Croitoru)
Alexandra Croitoru (b. 1975, Bucharest) is a visual artist, living and working in Bucharest. Between 1993 and 1998 she attended the National Academy of Arts in Bucharest. Starting with 1999 she has taught Representation Techniques – Photography at the Photo-Video Department of this institution; in 2014 she got a PhD in Visual and decorative arts, with a thesis on Brâncuși's nationalisation. Since 2011 Alexandra has been the co-curator of the Salon de proiecte, an exhibition programme active within MNAC Anexa, Bucharest.
Cristian Nae is an art critic and theorist, currently working as associate professor at the Department of Art History and Theory, "George Enescu" University of Arts. He is a former NEC and Getty-NEC fellow of the "New Europe College" Institute of Advanced Studies in Bucharest. He is also a former editor of Vector Magazine (2006-2008) and he collaborates with several journals and periodicals (such as IDEA, ARTA, Artmargins). He is interested in aesthetics, contemporary art history (especially in Eastern Europe), cultural and visual studies.
The main partner of tranzit.ro is the ERSTE Foundation.
