Andrei Nacu (b. 1984)
Andrei Nacu is a visual artist based between London/UK and Iasi/Romania. In his creative practice he is using documentary photography, the family album and the photographic archive to create stories which analyse the junction between personal memory and social history. His most recent work includes video, installation and performance and focuses on the politics of representation and media archaeology. He studied photography at the University of Wales, Newport, U.K. and George Enescu National University of Arts, Iasi, Romania. Currently he is working as a photo archivist for the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Find Andrei Nacu here:
https://www.andreinacu.ro/
https://www.instagram.com/andreinacu
Encircled by the Motherland
Using the family album, I explore the relations between vernacular photography and collective memory of socialist Romania, in the process of re-evaluation of its recent past. I’m analysing an archive of family photographs comprised of more than 40.000 images by systematizing it (identifying patterns, motifs, specificities) and exploring it using the Grounded Theory – an inductive approach, which involves a process of systematic generation of concepts and theories based on the collected data.
In this series I’m looking at the way soldiers are posing in order to have a memory from their military service. The gesture of their hands in relation to the buckle that has the Socialist Republic of Romania’s emblem on it can be a subtle metaphor for each personal experience of the military service and for the way each soldier was relating with the national symbols.
