The exhibition “Premonition of a Catastrophe” by Nadia Pronina, curated by Ana Daniela Sultana, is part of the exhibition program of the Arbor Association for Culture and Arts from 2023, entitled “Window to Europe,” intended for plastic artists originating from the Republic of Moldova who started their career in the 1990s when there were high-impact changes in Eastern Europe. Some of them chose the path of migration.
The exhibition program “Window to Europe” presents the creation of these artists, mainly unknown to the Romanian public, and their professional biography and the recipe for reinvention in their adopted countries.
Born in 1956 in Kyiv, Nadia Pronina grew up encouraged by her parents to follow an artistic path. Her family was transferred to Chisinau as a child, so she studied at both Kyiv and Chisinau art schools. In 1983, she graduated from the Stroganov Academy of Industrial Art in Moscow, department of glass art. After completing her studies, she returned to Chisinau, where she worked in various fields, from applied art and stained glass to book graphics. She also taught drawing and painting at the Institute of Arts in Chisinau, at the Department of Graphics. In 2012, she won the First Prize at the International Biennale in Forli (Italy), and a year later, she moved to Kyiv. She currently dedicates herself to painting and lives in France, where she took refuge at the start of the war in Ukraine.
“Just as the European artists and writers who, more than a century ago, before the outbreak of the First World War, foretold the great conflagration in their works, in the same way, Nadia Pronina, in the present exhibition, offers us “the premonition of a catastrophe.”
An earth-shattering solo show by an artist with a fascinating biography (born in Kyiv, raised in Chisinau, and currently based in France, where she took refuge after the first weeks of the war in Ukraine, which she spent in besieged Kyiv), “Premonition of a catastrophe” presents a series of painting and video animation works, which Nadia Pronina made even before the Russian invasion, and which were also the only ones she took with her when she left her native lands.
A subtle detail in the artist’s painting that can support the hypothesis of what Jung calls in “The Red Book” a “precognition of a collective event” can be how the characters in her works exhibited in Bucharest are arranged; they are found exclusively in groups, they are human ensembles in different poses, interacting, falling, the predominant colors being red and black. More conclusive, however, than this impressive series of paintings in the hypothesis of precognition is the video animation, which, with its rhythms and lyrics printed by those from Radiohead (Ful Stop), gives us the measure of an immense collective and personal tragedy.” Ana Daniela Sultana, curator
The exhibition “Premonition of a Catastrophe” by Nadia Pronina can be visited at Arbor. art.room (Str. Transilvaniei 11, sector 1, Bucharest), the exhibition space of the Arbor Association.
Visiting period: 06.10.2023 – 05.11.2023
Closed Monday – Tuesday
17:00 – 19:00 │ Wednesday – Friday
12:00 – 18:00 │ Saturday – Sunday
