Mircea Modreanu, Ilina Schileru, Lucian Sandu Milea, and Răzvan Năstase, artists from the independent collective E T A J artist-run space, will leave on Saturday, August 5, on a road residency to America. The journey-performance “iMigrate. The Biology of Transition” documents, from multiple artistic perspectives, the journey of Romanian migrants to the Promised Land.
They travel without money to the fortress of Hollywood welfare, where people with low incomes can only wander by chance, bearing the responsibility of their privations here and there. Will this paradise be reshaped by a world troubled by crises, from political, climate, and humanitarian ones to the post-pandemic inflationary wave? How is the new global reality shaped by migration, victims of war, asylum seekers, or new class divisions? How are political tectonics affecting artistic environments around the world?
Following in the footsteps of the new American Dreamers, the four novice travelers examine, from an artistic perspective, the clues that might herald new meanings of the old story, from the promise of material success or social mobility to contemporary nuances such as unique community ideals or the freedom to choose your way of life. Redefined in a troubled global setting, nations seem to isolate themselves within their borders, anticipating dark scenarios: crisis and regression.
Heterogeneous images in a collective framework
The four artists will create on the streets, subways, train stations, and airports to exhibit at the end of the road at the Durden and Ray Gallery in Los Angeles.
Mircea Modreanu works in plaster, inspired by objects picked up from the street, packaging, sticks, cardboard, and other small things, which could acquire a relevant meaning only when joined, like puzzle pieces, in a structure with a message. Moving images captured here and there are to become sketches from the plane, anticipating when they will be assembled for casting the works.
Ilina Schileru examines the structure of the societal binder. These stories bind people in a community, the meanings and the keys to interpreting the folklore background through which groups build their definitions, starting from oral culture to that documented and synthesized in alternative forms of knowledge. She references children, fairy tales, and fiction, how people reformulate their reality through a magical prism to achieve a transfer of responsibility to the outside. From small interviews with some travelers on the plane or from the airports to discussions about separation, parting, and giving up, works in charcoal on paper will result, in a collage of images made in situ, in the exhibition space, as a merging of heterogeneous narratives in a collective framework.
Stories from the road are also collected by Lucian-Sandu Milea to outline the Collector series, works that mix fragments of urban landscapes, silhouettes of buildings and people, and different moments and spaces superimposed in a crossroads of impossible geometries. On the border between axonometry and perspective, Colector is an exercise in representing a timeless universe. The length and time of this journey overlap, becoming an environment of meeting different cultures, just like the transit areas that inspire them: airport, train station, subway, and street. The work thus becomes a collector, a “receptacle,” as this concept is found in Plato’s dialogue, Timaeus.
The photographic documentation of the trip will be handled by Răzvan Năstase, who will realize this project in a dynamic point-and-shoot, street photography, sometimes touristic, other times competent, never premeditated, deliberately subjective, and therefore slightly distorted. Photographs also become a way of integrating into an unknown, perhaps hostile, intriguing space. Mixing contemporary concepts, the artist starts with digital photography, which he translates into reality through analog transfer or cyanotype techniques. In the end, large-scale work will be made up of small elements, a solution chosen not only to simplify logistics and maintenance but especially for an aesthetic of seriality, like a grid that orders the composition, influencing its perception. Photography is a simple pretext to put a set of skills and values to work in a new space, outside the workshop, outside the city, outside the country, or on the other side of the globe.
Can the experience of migration be an asset in becoming an artist?
All the artists who ever emigrated were motivated by the desire to prosper, whether they succeeded in changing art history, such as Constantin Brâncusi or Andrei Câdere, or whether they failed and remained anonymous. Simulating the deprivations that migrants often face during the nomadic process, the works that will be exhibited in the Durden and Ray gallery space will be made with minimal resources, as much as can be carried by a migrant in an air race. The materials will occupy a volume equal to a maximum of 20 kg suitcase, i.e., the usual dowry of those moving towards a new life.
At the destination, the group of Romanian artists will build, together with five other American artists, a collaborative exhibition in the space of the Durden and Ray gallery, dedicated to the experience of “translocation,” “re-becoming,” “re-adaptation,” and prospecting of a globalizing culture involving both formative and degenerative qualities. Paraphrasing the hostilities that migrants (including artists who leave their cultural environments) face towards their final destination, the exhibition becomes an extended space of critical meditation from a multidisciplinary perspective, which questions the socio-cultural coordinates of artistic practices in the (post)pandemic season and the multiple problems facing the whole (art) world today: how will this new social distortion affect us in the long run?
Founded in 2009, Durden and Ray’s initiative brings together artists and curators who work together to create exhibition opportunities in their downtown Los Angeles gallery. The collective remains open to collaborations with artist groups and gallery spaces worldwide. Durden and Ray focus on small group exhibitions and host international artists as part of their manifest commitment to global exchange and alternative networks.
The Durden and Ray model overlays several contemporary concepts and strategies, from the commercial potential and visual identity of a gallery to the democratic structure of an artist group, the potential to create collaborative artwork, or financial support through its programs for group members or project partners, a model similar to a nonprofit organization. Durden and Ray support individual practice but also common goals of curatorial experimentation, visual research, or artistic exchanges with international partners.
“iMigrate. The Biology of Transition” aims to promote Romanian culture internationally, exchange experience, and strengthen relations between domestic and overseas cultural operators. Part of the themes and resources included in the project will bear national cultural references, be it cinema, visual arts, or music – ancient or contemporary. The exhibition in Los Angeles could be the occasion for many American artists and visitors to have first contact with cultural fragments of Romanian origin, treated experimentally.
In September, the group will present this journey of initiation in an exhibition at the E T A J Gallery in Bucharest.
Team:
Ioana Bogdan (project manager) | Evantia Barca (PR and communication) | Gabriela Ferche (financial manager) | Ilina Schileru (visual artist, curator, graphic design) | Mircea Modreanu, Lucian Sandu Milea, Răzvan Năstase (visual artists)
Durden and Ray Gallery: Carlos Bertrand Arciega, Ben Jackel, Lana Duong, Daniela Soberman, Steven Wolkoff (artists).
Mircea Modreanu is a visual artist, cultural project manager, and gallerist. He attended the courses of the Faculty of Fine Arts at UAD Cluj, and immediately after completing his degree, he reconfigured his route to Bucharest. In 2014 he completed his master’s degree at UNArte’s graphics department, and a year later, he founded an NGO, representing his debut as a manager of cultural projects.
Since the E T A J artist-run space project was born in 2018, Mircea has organized exhibitions in Bucharest at 43 George Enescu Street, where he has invited over 200 artists. In the lockdown, as a form of documentation and archiving, he started filming interviews with the artists he uploaded to the YouTube channel ETAJ TV; he is the coordinator of E T A J Magazine, a publication launched out of the desire to promote contemporary art and local artists.
Ilina Schileru graduated from the Graphics department with a master’s degree from the University of Arts in Bucharest in 2010. In 2022 she was the curator of the collateral event for the Roma representation at the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale, organized by ERIAC (European Institute for Roma Art and Culture). Member of UAP Romania and founder of the EBienale (in association with the George Enescu Festival and Competition), Ilina Schileru is currently the coordinator of the independent space MNTRplusC, a contemporary art program under the auspices of the National Museum of the Peasant, starting from April 2021.
The MNTRplusC program relies on international collaborations between the local Romanian scene and foreign or diaspora artists/curators. Since 2018, she has collaborated with NGOs to integrate immigrant and refugee children through art programs she develops in partnership with museums and other institutes (Museum of Recent Art, MNAR, British Council, etc.). She is part of the ETAJ artist-run space team with which she exhibited at five art fairs in Europe (Milan, Stockholm, Madrid, Budapest, Aarhus), and in 2023, she will complete a project with the Durden and Ray Gallery in Los Angeles. She writes for ARTA Magazine, Propagarta (Romania), and No Niin (Helsinki, Finland). She lives and works in Bucharest.
Lucian Sandu-Milea (b. 1986, Sînnicolau-Mare) is a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at UAUIM. He works as an artist (street art, illustrator, and 3D graphic designer), architect, and organizer of cultural events. He is a founding member of the Carol 53 project.
Răzvan Năstase (b. 1991) is a National University of Arts graduate in Bucharest, Painting department. Currently, he lives and works in Bucharest. He participated in numerous national and international exhibitions in 2014, obtaining the first prize in the Sofia “International Student Biennale – Drawing.”
Răzvan explores in his art the dialogue between the three primary elements of the two-dimensional image: color, composition, and texture. The realm in which the artist manifests is that of purely abstract forms. His approach is essentially minimalist, rooted in his quest to understand pure aesthetic thought concerning the art object. The motivation that animates the artist is intrinsic to the artistic act, and spontaneity determines the physical form that soul and mental phenomena receive.
Recently, Răzvan Năstase formulated a calculated, technical discourse that summarizes the research of light art and laser phenomena. He is interested in how light can lead spaces into infinite ways of metamorphosis.
“iMigrate. The Biology of Transition” is a project co-financed by the Romanian Cultural Institute through the CANTEMIR Program – a funding program for cultural projects intended for the international environment.
Project organized by SCHILERS HOUSE, in partnership with E T A J artist-run space, D3M Association, and Durden and Ray Gallery Los Angeles.
Media partners: Empower Artists Magazine, Propagarta, Vice, Spotmedia, IQAds, SMARK, Revista Zeppelin, Revista Arta, Radio Romania Cultural, Modernism.ro, Zile și Nopți, Daily Magazine, Ziarul Metropolis, Feeder, DigitizArte, Munteanu, Igloo, HAPP, F64, Radio România International, The Institute, TANANANA, Curatorial.ro., ArTeVezi, Agenția de Carte, Radio Guerrilla, Ochiul de Veghe, Revista Timpul, The Woman
Cover photo: Mircea Modreanu, Carlos Beltran Arechiga (Duredn and Ray), Ilina Schileru si Lucian Sandu Milea
