The exhibition “roMANIA, Identity and a Reservoir of Votes”, curated by Mihaela Lungu, investigates the mechanisms through which national and traditional symbols become tools of manipulation, mythologization, and electoral instrumentalization. The exhibition brings together works by Radu Carnariu, Alina Tofan, Cuzina, Constantin Axinte, Mihaela Lungu, Dromp, Georgea Dura, and Alex Topală, with Dan Perjovschi as the guest artist.

“In this exhibition, identity is not a given but a battlefield: a space where national mythology collides with global identity mobility. Tradition is both décor and strategy, an object of heritage and an object of campaign.

Within the electoral setting, Romania becomes ideological stage props—folklore, traditional costume, the tricolor, and Orthodoxy are converted into currency for emotion, votes, and obedience.

The exhibited works question the risks of ethno-nationalism built on mythic formulas, the nostalgia for a non-existent purity, and the proliferation of an aggressive sovereigntism that cultivates separation, identity panic, and conflict. In a multicultural world, connected to global flows of ideas, styles, and values, what does it still mean to be a “true Romanian”?

By exploiting political rhetoric and national iconography, the artists invite the public to reflect on the metamorphosis of symbols: from identity marker to electoral ornament, from living heritage to instant cultural consumption, from belonging to tactical instrument.

Critique, irony, and introspection meet here to expose the hypocrisy of a society that rejects globalization yet lives its life at a global pace; that invokes “roots” while operating according to algorithmic logic.

ro-MÂNIA is the diagnosis of a collective emotion systematically exploited.

The exhibition does not provide answers. It opens a fissure. And within that fissure, identity begins.”
— Toma Cristina