Artep Gallery dedicates the spring of 2024 exclusively to the artistic perspective proposed by women, but not limited to feminism, out of the need to reproduce the themes deepened by the world’s artists and curators in the last century as inclusively as possible.
In this sense, the Artep Gallery invited two Romanian curators to propose their own curatorial perspective highlighting the art made by female artists. The dialogue between the two curators and the proposed research themes both satisfy the need to bring women’s art to the fore through different mediums of expression but also the need to generate a public dialogue at the level of society inspired by an assumed cultural direction.
The first exhibition, curated by Cristina Moraru, addresses the issue of ecological justice and activist-agricultural commitment within an artistic research carried out by the Swedish ecofeminist artist Åsa Sonjasdotter. The exhibition will be an open manifesto in support of the reactivation of collaborative farming methods, including the work “The Kale Bed Is So Called Because There Is Always Kale in It”, made in collaboration with Mercè Torres Ràfols and Allkorn & Hans Larsson and will be able to be visited during April 2 – May 20, 2024.
Åsa Sonjasdotter is an artist, researcher, writer and social worker living on the island of Ven, Sweden, and in Berlin, Germany. The artistic work of the Swedish artist originates from her need to engage in material-narrative processes to deconstruct violent relationships through food and land. Investigating monoculture agricultural fields in the highly industrialized region of Southern Scandinavia, she has direct personal experience of the effects produced by the relationships between people, habitats, water and land. Sonjasdotter has been involved in educating farmers’ knowledge and people’s relationship with food for two decades.
Sonjasdotter is the author of “Peace with the Earth. Earth, Tracing Agricultural Memory – Refigurer Practice”, published by Archive Books, Berlin, in 2019. The book presents a micro-historical survey of the agricultural practices of three basic crops: cereals, potatoes and cabbage. Åsa Sonjasdotter is a PhD researcher in artistic practice at the Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. From 2015 to 2019, she was a founding member of the Neighborhood Academy, Berlin. In 2007, Sonjasdotter co-founded Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, Arctic University of Norway, where she was program leader until 2010 and professor until 2014. She participated in the founding of the Danish artist association Young Art Workers in 2002. Sonjasdotter is the founder of Women Down the Pub (Kvinder på Værtshus), a feminist action network initiated in Copenhagen in 1996, which published the anthology of texts “View, feminist strategies in Danish Visual Art” in 2004.
Cristina MORARU is a researcher, curator and editor from Iasi. She works as a university lecturer at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts and is a founding member of the Contemporary Photography Center. At the same time, she is a member of the TPP research forum supported by Technische Universität Berlin, Universität Bonn, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg and Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, member of AICA and (co)editor of the academic publication Studies in Visual Arts and Communication.
She participated in international study programs, workshops and research residencies within NCCR University of Basel, CRC “Affective Societies” Freie Universität Berlin, Aarhus University, University of Vienna, Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), Valand Academy for Art and Design (University of Gothenburg), University of Copenhagen, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Universität Hamburg, Loughborough University, Birmingham City University, Pedagogical University of Krakow, European University at St Petersburg, Danube University Krems, Ben- Gurion University of the Negev, MTFA Academy Chișinau, EEPAP Lublin, LCCA Latvia, CCA Prishtina, The Cvito Fiskovic Center in Split, Institute of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Fondazione Arthur Cravan in Milan and other independent institutions.
The project continues in June-July 2024 with an exhibition curated by researcher Larisa Oancea. The exhibition explores themes related to feminism, performativity, and the political identity of the body through artist books. In parallel, there will be a debate dedicated to curators and artists from Europe around the central theme of the “Women Spotlight: Feminine Art” program.
Larisa OANCEA is an art historian and independent researcher. Since 2016, she has lived in Venice, where she collaborates with numerous cultural institutions. She holds a doctorate in Art History and Theory (National University of Arts in Bucharest) with a thesis on the influences of Renaissance art on European cinema, from Sergei Eisenstein to Peter Greenaway and Lech Majewski. Trained as both an art historian and an anthropologist, Larisa has constantly devoted herself to researching the dialogue between painting and film, as well as the relationship between cinematography and anthropology.
She is the author of “Nancy Spanier. The Arc of a Dancing Life” – a monograph on choreographer and performance artist Nancy Spanier, published by Performance Inventions in December 2021. In recent years, she has worked as a researcher at Siam’s Guy Books, Yogurt Magazine and Performance Inventions; museum assistant at Fondazione Prada, Triennale di Milano, Biennale di Venezia, Fondazione Pino Pascali; curator of numerous exhibitions and thematic film sessions. She currently collaborates with the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and from 2021, she has been a researcher and curator in the private collection of artist books, Tiane Doan na Champassak.
Cultural project co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund
Partners: “George Enescu” University of Arts, Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art, Destination IașI
Media partners: Propagarta Magazine, EMPOWER ARTISTS MAGAZINE, PIN Association for the Promotion of Technology and Creative Industries, Modernism Magazine
The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how its results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding beneficiary.
