Tudor Bratu (b. 1977)
Tudor Bratu graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (2003) and the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten (2008) and obtained a BA Art History from the University of Amsterdam in 2013. Bratu works with photography, installation, artists books and essayistic forms. Next to his practice Bratu manages the artists in residency project Bucharest Air (www.bucharestair.com) since 2010 and currently teaches at St Joost Academy of Fine Arts and AKI Academy of Fine Arts in Enschede. Bratu’s works are part of the collections of (amongst others) Centre Pompidou (FR), Utopicus Foundatin (ES) and Amsterdam Photography Museum FOAM (NL).
Find Tudor Bratu here:
https://tudorbratu.com/
For Cigarettes, A Note Would Say, With All My Love (2015-2016)
She was eighteen, my mother told me, and spent her summers daydreaming and writing poetry somewhere in the dusty countryside at the outskirts of Bucharest. Every day, except Sunday, the postman would deliver a letter from her lover. “To Cristina” the envelope said in curled words that suggested the careful touch of his hands. Next to the letters, folded inside the envelopes, she would always find five or ten lei, depending on how much he had put aside by eating less. “For cigarettes”, a note would say, “with all my love”. Reading the pile of letters years later I wasn’t surprised to find none written by my mother. I have always felt that in the meeting of art and love, love always loses.
*
The critic inside you should first stand a while at the entrance to this space. If you have come here prepared for love, but love has not been offered you, you will have found the only criticism that makes sense.
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*
Seated for a coffee, my father recalled the story of his third wife. It was 1986, at the height of Romanian Communism, when my mother remarried a Dutch man and the three of us moved to The Netherlands. “I realised I would never see my son again”, my father said, “and I decided to ask asylum in Switzerland,” he continued, “but I knew I could not leave Romania as a single man with an anti-communist past”. He inhaled the smoke deeply while talking: “I asked her to marry me knowing I would marry her just to be able to leave the country”. My father loves me with a fierce love.
*
In 1999 I saw my girlfriend walking down the stairs of the academy. “My grandfather just died”, I said. “I’m sorry”, she replied briskly as she ran off, “we can talk later if you want, but now I am already late”. Over the years we stayed friends of course, but we have never known each other more intimately than at that very moment.
*
My grandmother appeared in the doorway, bracing herself and balancing. From the other side of the hallway I felt the warmth of family in her eyes, her childlike joy in seeing me. The urine formed a puddle on the floor. Her nightgown slowly changed its colour.
*
When she died, she died of starvation. Her body shrivelled and shrank over a period of weeks, maybe months. Mom pointed towards me from the side of her bed. “Look, Tudor is here too”, she said. As I was standing a few feet away, I couldn’t see if her eyes were opened or closed. Her breath carried the words into the room. “Tudor? Oh how I loved him”.
*
One punishment involved crushing chestnut shells into tiny fragments and scattering them on the wooden floor. Once arranged, I was told to kneel down on top of them. The pointy fragments carved into the skin rather than into the hardened floorboards. The cruelty of this punishment consisted not in the practice itself, but in the motherly love that made the child believe he deserved it.
*
One day, she simply didn’t answer anymore. It had gone quiet over time, until it disappeared altogether, like it had never been, like it could have never happened. The strength of cowardice lies in the singularity of its compulsion.
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In empty rooms chairs are usually positioned in such a way, as to give the impression of unfolding conversations.
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Pain at the rejection of ones love has little to do with actual individuals. Rather, it is to be found in the remembrance of the fact that we hardly ever care.
