Cătălin Burcea, Călina Coman, Răzvan Năstase, Mircea Modreanu and Ilina Schileru, artists and curators from the independent collective E T A J artist-run space, participated at the second edition of the TRYST Art Fair event in Los Angeles (23 – 25 August 2024), organized by the Torrance Art Museum (TAM – Torrance Art Museum), with a performance on the theme of freedom, entitled Breaking Bread: The Tale of a Revolution.

“On the 35th anniversary of the Revolution, the Romanian Cultural Institute celebrates freedom and ETAJ, the freedom of artistic expression – thus laying the foundations for an exhibition project at the intersection of visual and performing arts, inspired by the communist children’s song “We in the Year 2000”. The concept is based on a particular line from a song by Horia Moculescu, which links tomorrow with “gold and bread”.
The New Millennium promised a utopian world, flowers and palaces, but the communist propaganda would formally end with the execution of the communist leader. Each of us has experienced totalitarianism differently; some of us are children, some are teenagers, some were born at the height of the regime’s fall, and some experienced communism through the stories and experiences of others.

The exhibition offers a contextual interpretation in situ, built around the Gold – Bread – Freedom triad. The project’s centrepiece is the pyramidal structure to which more than two hundred gilded loaves of bread are added like a veil, hiding historical images from the everyday life of the time and illustrating moments of working-class citizens waiting in line for a loaf of bread.

The ETAJ collective operates in an artist-run manner, something that is often reflected in the unconventional projects they carry out. The title Breaking Bread: The Tale of a Revolution retains a dash of the group’s characteristic irony subversiveness and alludes to the well-known American television series whose sub-themes include, among others, the freedom of the individual.”