Today, August 3, Ioana Niculescu-Aron exhibits at ETAJ artist-run space, on George Enescu street no. 43, Bucharest, her latest artistic project called Confession, on which she has been working for more than two years.
In the vision of the artist Ioana Niculescu-Aron, the installation Dans ma rue presented in this solo is “an archive of the works and lives of artists from all over the world who emigrated to Paris, and this category also includes those who left Provence and settled in Paris – a movement that required a lot of courage a century ago. The reason I’m doing this project is to show another side of female artists who, during their lifetime, were more considered for the roles of models or muses. These artists are proof that we are not shaped by a single culture and that history cannot be told from a single perspective. A good example is the American artist Carmen Herrera (born in Cuba), whose time in Paris between 1949 and 1953 (during the Cold War) shaped and defined her style
It is about a historical moment when many female artists have learned to endure so that they can continue to develop their own artistic endeavors. Their most important weapon was perseverance. Dans ma rue is an installation for which I intertwine the text with the image. From the documentation process to the execution, I relate equally to the artists’ diaries and memoirs as well as to iconic places or visuals. In the process of developing this installation, I also include scenographic elements, photo collage, video art, and performance.
The way people choose to live their lives and the activities for which everyone opts are all elements that irreversibly change the urban space. I am fascinated to look behind human thoughts, and in the project Dans ma rue, I identify a collective voice of women artists who started on the streets of Paris. I consider Paris a living archive because the streets of this city are kept with holiness elements from the past that resist in full harmony alongside everything that appears new. Whenever I walk around Paris I have the feeling that I find out a little bit from the secrets of the people who lived/ passed by there before. My metaphor is the street, and everyone is part of it.
Through this installation, I tell the stories of female artists such as Milada Mareșova (Czech Republic), Oxana Shachko (Ukraine), Gabriella Lima (Brazil), Wanda Mihuleac (Romania), Misia Sert (Poland), Leonor Fini (Argentina), Carmen Herrera (USA), Mata Hari (Netherlands), Isadora Duncan (USA), Gertrude Stein (USA), Marguerite Duras (Vietnam), Anna-Eva Bergman (Sweden), Tsuneko Taniuchi (Japan), Toyen (Czech Republic), Alice Halicka (Poland), etc.”
