Art Exhibitions, Experiences

„Poetics of Hospitality, Vol. II”, a new group exhibition at Anca Poterașu Gallery

Exploring themes such as spaces of memory in migrations caused by war or precarious socio-economic conditions, the group exhibition at Anca Poterașu presents the works of Carlos Amorales, Ovidiu Anton, Valentina Avanzini, Matei Bejenaru, Orit Ishay, Zhanna Kadyrova, Renata Poljak. The exhibition brings to the center of attention an ocean of experiences that connect us across geographies of alienation and violence, in moments of peace or war, that leave traces across imaginary borders and beyond the limits of empathy.

Taking as its starting point the concept of hospitality in Derrida’s sense, the exhibition Poetics of Hospitality reflects the inherent ambiguities and contradictions of this term, which is in a semantic proximity to that of power through the influence exerted on the other, the migrant/foreigner, and which involves an ethical and political dimension.

The connections between the artworks emphasize both the loss and the implicit and explicit violence of any event that forces migration, be it economic, political or social in nature. Individual images and stories of geopolitical or economic permutations impose new realities felt both across borders and in the past-home, from individual temporal perspectives, but gathered in a chorus of experiences felt at a generational level, as Valentina Avanzini’s searches underline centered on the lullabies of the women who went to Italy or the film “Far away” by Matei Bejenaru, directly related to economic migration in the Romanian context, with an emphasis on domestic work far from their own families.

Expanding the area of dialogue, looking at the phenomenon of displacement of some communities on a global scale, the sculptures and collages made in wood by the artist Ovidiu Anton mark the permanence of migration waves and the inadequacy of political and social constructs to these almost inevitable changes. The artist has a long practice of abstracting in his sculptures and collages tools of fear, graphic symbols of oppression, borders and codes that transform lines drawn in the sand into the violent realities of non-hospitality. Establishing through his works an immutable character of repressive force and hostility, Ovidiu Anton allows the exploration of the alienating, cynical and absurd consequences, as well as the contrasting ones, which lead to a form of hope and reconciliation.

Going through the group exhibition in a sense, the viewer can observe how the work of Carlos Amorales marks a terminus point, an incomprehensible limit of territorial and economic negotiations, beyond which human life no longer seems to have a value. Exploring the atrocities caused by the war, the graphic novel entitled “La Lengua de los Muertos” (2010) transposes images from realities recorded in Mexico into a format circulated as if in another dimension, where we could understand the language of those beyond, whose words appear written in a special alphabet created by the artist. Untranslatable and incomprehensible, the stories and voices of those who are no longer, tell only the story of what was recorded, graphic and silent. The presence of the research and audio recording project carried out by Valentina Avanzini, entitled “Mother Tongue”, is all the more remarkable in this dialogue.

In the open space of the exhibition, Avanzini presents a lullaby performed by Paraschiva Cioban who gave her permission to exhibit in this context – Paraschiva has been living and working in Italy since 2005, caring for sick people and children, like thousands of women and men seeking to provide a better future for their families left behind.

The words inscribed in the neon work of the artist Renata Poljak hover in the space inhabited by lullabies, inducing a sense of unease for the viewer, rendering the enumeration more more more [more, more, more], creating both positive associations and and negative, an overflow from a cycle of individual time, which has an arbitrary chance to unfold in one way or another, along a long, inter-generational temporal area crossed by historical events.

In another sense of the exhibition trajectory, the viewer is confronted with the mathematical reality of the lohn system, literally representing the profit obtained by multinational companies that use cheap labor from Romania.

Matei Bejenaru demonstrates how Romanian workers were paid one-eighth of the salary of a similar worker from any European country, at the time of the creation of the work “Enlarged Clothes” (2005). The consequences of this reality are also visible in today’s labor migration in Romania, almost 20 years later, and 17 years after Romania’s integration into the European Union.

The sculptural group made of oversized clothes is confronted in a dialogue with the embroidery series “Anxiety” (2022) by Zhanna Kadyrova. The artist presents embroideries found, with harmless motifs recognizable in the European area, of deer and natural landscapes, over which the Ukrainian artist intervenes by weaving some words expressing the state of alert induced by the imminent air attacks in Ukraine. Part of the same series is also currently on display in Kyiv, in his personal exhibition at Pinchukartcentre, entitled “Flying Trajectories”.

In the gallery space, the selection emphasizes the domestic element, of a “home” always under threat, creating a cyclical link with the photographs of pixelated embroideries, presented by Orit Ishay in the first episode of the exhibitions centered on the concept of migration and hospitality presented by Anca Poterașu this year. Moreover, to mark this continuity, the artist Orit Ishay presents in Poetics of Hospitality. Vol II his film work, “Chocolat”, in a scenario that mixes reality with fiction, economic and political rationalizations, in a lucid perspective on the intersections between racism, colonialism and war crimes.

In the same projection space, the works “Porvenir” (2020) and “Partenza” (2016) made by Renata Poljak give the impression of a mysterious but benevolent presence that offers an intimate look, a melancholy of separation, in images that emphasize places of memory, connecting fear with the hope of return, the ephemeral with the certainty of what can be preserved.

Images of uprootings and dislocations, both identity and territorial, are metaphorized in nomadic spaces, homeless spaces, transitory or utopian spaces, interwoven on a common map.