An interview conducted by Dana PĀRVULESCU

Matei Rădulescu (b. 2001, Bucharest, Romania) studied Graphics at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. His interests revolve around illustration, comics and plastic images as means of telling stories, keeping the primacy of drawing as a way of expression. Through his visual creations, he explores and conveys various happenings and personal experiences, turning them into introspections of the spaces we inhabit, as well as those we only pass through at a certain stage of life.

“I strongly believe in the capacity of drawing and the plastic image to understand the world we live in and the relationships with the spaces we inhabit and/or transit through. Through what I draw, I try to leave my mark on the subject in question, looking for a certain essentialization of some scenes or memories, making this discovery to the same extent easy for those from the outside to discover through my filter the relationship with a certain space or in a certain period presented.”

Dana Pârvulescu: Please tell me a few words about yourself, your artistic practice, and your artistic process during the residency.

Matei Rădulescu: I am a graphic artist and illustrator concerned with the subtleties of the spaces we end up in, be they temporary, and the experience that defines us in these spaces. During the residency, I turned to my favorite way of plastic representation, illustration and drawing in ink and sepia, with an artistic documentary touch.

D.P.: What were your expectations before starting the residency, and how have they changed along the way?

M.R.: I set out to capture from the very beginning the relationship that nature (still) has with the space of Luncavita. I learned about the damming of the pond and the villagers’ nostalgia for the water from the articles of the anthropologists who documented the space last year. Still, somehow, it was not clear to me until I got there how this space presents itself. The lush-dusty opposition best describes this before & after the pond, which I emphasized in my illustrations.

D. P.: What impact did the local community have on your art? Have you interacted with the locals or integrated elements from their everyday proximity in your works?

M.R.: I initially wanted to integrate people, but I realized I find it much more interesting how nature and the non-human describe the village’s landscape and people’s activities. A kind of presence through absence in my illustrations, where we find the dried fish, the fish soup, the electric tricycles that populate the paved streets, the trunks cut from the trees, a flock of sheep returning from the Danube. All the elements drawn by me are closely related to the people and activities of the place, they present both traditions but also the need to modernize the countryside without directly presenting those involved. In fact, I believe that the idea of ​​community can be found in the multitude of diverse concerns of the villagers and the influence of nature in everyday life.

D. P.: What did you learn from the interactions with the flora and fauna of Dobrogea? Is there a story or incident that marked you and that you have translated into your works?

M.R.: I realized that water plays a much more important role when it is no longer part of the ecosystem in which it used to exist. The villagers are still fishermen, but now the fish is sold in the market and brought from other places. So, any fishing success feels much better now that the pond is no longer flooding and anglers must go elsewhere for fish. With Matei, my fellow resident, I went fishing (I just watched), and I understood the nostalgia related to what could still be Luncavița today when he was catching fish.

D. P.: What is the source of your interest in interdisciplinary projects?

M.R.: I was happy that not only artists were involved in this project. I think the perspective of the anthropologists and the discussions we had over coffee in the morning or over a beer in the evening about how they understand space gave me a more precise direction on what I was after in the illustration as well. In fact, I think that’s what I tried to capture, somehow, what the anthropologists could not capture from the interviews and discussions in the field. Somehow, my field notes are actually the drawings made. However, different mediums of expression have the same role in understanding the space they research.

D. P.: How did this experience change your perspective on the artist’s role in a rural space?

M.R.: It didn’t change me radically because even before, I considered that the place of artists is on the field, alongside researchers, and I think interdisciplinarity must be a characteristic of contemporary life. I want artists’ involvement in studying and promoting natural heritage, and the Dobrogean countryside is too little studied in this direction. I feel like a breath of fresh air this residency initiative to bring different professions together and work with what each has to offer.

D. P.: How will you use the experiences from the residency in your future artistic projects?

M.R.: I think that, following the interactions with anthropologists in the field, I learned how much it means to sit and listen to the one you are interviewing, to see where their stories connect to what you are researching. In my case, in artistic creation, I learned how important it is to be physically in a place to take its “pulse”. As an illustrator, it seems you don’t have to move too far from your office or workshop. Still, I think fieldwork has its role for artists as well, if not directly as in the case of anthropology, at least at the level of familiarization with the space studied.

D. P.: What plans do you have for this fall? Are we going to see you somewhere, and if so, where?

M.R.: I am exhibiting some of the drawings and illustrations from the residency in the exhibition, which opened at the Romanian Peasant Museum on October 4th and will run until the 22nd. This exhibition was part of this year’s NAG tour in Bucharest.
Since this autumn, I have been a student at UNArte’s Master of Graphic Arts, where I continue my visual research related to illustration, sequential images, and drawing. For those curious, my bachelor’s project can also be seen at the DIPLOMA Show 2024 from October 4th until the 13th.
In the middle of October, I will participate in a group exhibition at ARCUB, about which I won’t say too much yet. If everything goes well, it should reach three cities in Italy. It’s all about a journey that happened more than 800 years ago and how I imagine it in a contemporary comic book format.

CONTEXT:

The second edition of the Art and Anthropology residency, organized in the Luncavița commune in the Northern Dobrogea area, was under the sign of changes, adaptations and amorphous transformations between the natural and the anthropic. Held in two series, at the end of spring and the beginning of autumn, the research captures the natural environment and the local infrastructure in a time and space pose that is no longer deeply guided by ancestral dynamics. The former floodplain of the Danube has changed into a place that acclimatizes both non-human animals and machines, tools for coexistence between analogue and digital, and spontaneous and creative efficiency strategies. Interesting are the adaptations, hybridizations and own formulas to negotiate the modern and the traditional.

The project exhibition gathered this year under the name “Glossary, residence” is part of the interdisciplinary research from this year in the Aquarium Hall of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, where it can be visited until October 22.

The interviews with the artists present in this project were designed to reveal how interactions with the natural environment and with the locals of a rural community influenced the creation and interdisciplinary perspectives of a young artist participating in the Art and Anthropology Residency in Luncavița (Tulcea ).

The first interview in this series has Matei Rădulescu as a guest. You can find Matei here https://www.instagram.com/matei.radulescu/

Image @Lena Ciobanu
Illustrations @Matei Rădulescu

“Art and Anthropology” is a project initiated by the Artistic Laboratory Association and co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration. The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how its results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding beneficiary.