Bucharest. The City – Me
Alina Cristea
Hierophanies
Roxana Savin
“Matei Vișniec has once named one of his poetry books The City with One Inhabitant. This is how I always felt about Bucharest – as my city, even more so, the city – me” (Mircea Cărtărescu).
By using narrations to re-signify situations and events filtered through her individual and particular viewpoints, Alina Cristea aims to tell a story about Bucharest as she sees it.
“Alina Cristea’s thoughts stick close to the outside world when roaming the city of Bucharest with her camera. After a long period of absence, she looks at her native town with the eyes of a tourist or a photographer, or not quite entirely, given that she finds herself in the situation of a person trying to look at her former biotope with unfamiliar eyes.
Her attention focuses mainly on people’s behaviour in the urban sphere, covering the four seasons in one year. This results in a series of powerful images that are actually universal, while on-screen, we can follow her inner dialogue during the journey.” (curator Filip Luyckx)
“Bucharest. The City-Me” is an ongoing work that started in 2016 and will be made of six fragments/short films. It is based on Alina Cristea’s practice of exploring Bucharest through analogue photography, sound recordings, and diary texts.
This body of work has been made in Romania and explores the transformations in a society where culture and spirituality are reshaped by globalizing trends. Urbanization, globalization and neoliberal reforms are transforming the physical landscape and challenging ancient societal beliefs.
According to Mircea Eliade, the Romanian philosopher and historian of religion, contemporary people believe their world is entirely profane or secular, yet they still at times find themselves connected unconsciously to the memory of something sacred. Through hierophanies, people become aware of the sacred because it manifests itself as a wholly different reality than the profane. The possibility of transcendence is revealed by objects in the natural world, or symbols such as a door or a threshold, as a boundary between outside and inside that allows the possibility of passage from one zone to another (from the profane to the sacred). Romania’s cultural heritage is deeply rooted in Christian Orthodox faith, which has shaped its culture, traditions and national identity. The country’s relative economic prosperity following a difficult post-communist transition, has been fraught with feelings of uncertainty regarding the present and the future. With consumerism as the dominant ethos and an increasingly individualistic capitalist society, the ancient values and traditions are being simultaneously renegotiated and invoked.
The images depart from the rigour of the documentary approach and propose an open-ended narrative; a visual investigation of the cultural and spiritual codes embedded in the multiple layers of the ordinary.
Romanian Contemporary Photography INFLUX – Looking Back to the Future
This joint presentation has been made possible through the “Looking Back to the Future” project. Beside including new project and article commissions, it’s main goal is to provides a bird’s eye view on the use of photography in the Romanian art scene spanning across the last three decades (and beyond). By showcasing texts, publications and exhibitions of relevancy in the this (not so) recent history, we can outline the development of this medium, highlighting the major transformations and trends that have defined the Romanian photographic expression.
This project was co-funded by the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN). It does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration and AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or for how the project results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding beneficiary.
Alina Cristea is a Romanian artist working with photography and film, currently living and working in Brussels and Bucharest.
After living in different cities in Belgium and the Czech Republic, where she pursued Photography and Cultural Studies, she became interested in her identity as a Romanian in Europe and in her hometown, Bucharest. This led to the “Bucharest. The City with One Inhabitant. The City-Me” research project, which combines photography, sound, and text. Using narrations to re-signify situations and events filtered through her individual and particular viewpoints, she aims to tell a story about Bucharest as she sees it.
Her work is part of the ARGOS media collection and distribution network, as well as Kunst in Huis (BE). In 2016, she co-founded the duo collective DOI (“two” in Romanian), in which she experimented with different media and explored the dynamics of the duo together with another visual artist. Together, they created the DOI Creative Lab, a project focused on making duos out of art students in Belgium. Currently, she is pursuing a practice-based PhD at KU Leuven and LUCA School of Arts in Belgium, embedded in the Intermedia research unit. She is also a member of Writing Urban Places.
Roxana Savin is a photographic artist born and raised in Romania. Her practice is at the intersection between realism and constructed and connects aesthetics, conceptual thinking and traditional photographic processes. She often explores themes connected to her personal experiences: notions of home, belonging, status of women in contemporary society.
Roxana graduated MA Photography with Distinction by Falmouth University UK (2020). She was selected as one of GUP 100 Talents (published in Fresh Eyes 2021). Her work was exhibited in Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Estonia and published internationally (BJP, Der Grief, Royal Photographic Society Magazine, Photomonitor, ARTdoc magazine, etc). The project ‘I’ll be late tonight’ was nominated among Best projects of 2020 by Phmuseum. Inspired by Roxana’s experience as a stay at home mother, the photobook ‘I’ll be late tonight’ was awarded Silver Winner by PX3 Paris, Honorable Mention by Encontros Da Imagem Book Award and was shortlisted at Untitled Dummy Awards Russia 2020.
Roxana Savin is currently based in Geneva and works between Switzerland and Romania.