Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Andreea. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?
I am working on some new projects besides the ongoing ones. My obsession with the relations between materials and sounds and how these two interact is still in process.
My main project now, based on this subject, is Artificial Lungs, an ongoing project started in December 2016, in which I present to the public a synesthetic experience of a gentle blowing wind. It focuses on the invisible natural movement of the air and explores shapes and materialities that reorganize the natural phenomenon into a sensorial arrangement of auditory, visual and aesthetic stimuli.
I am also experimenting with the connection between the surrounding sounds and human perception, in describing the sounds in colors and different shapes.
I also have to mention that because of the ongoing political and social problems in my country, where cultural buildings are left to go to waste, I decided to work on a project regarding these problems, even though I mentioned I’ve always tried to stay away from them.
The project started in November 2016. It’s an ongoing project about abandoned places in the post-communist countries. I began in Poznan and continued in Bucharest. I focused on abandoned industrial buildings using as a main artistic and communication method the EXIST sign that I have chosen (*EXIST sign is the same size, color and typography as the emergency EXIT sign).
I consider myself in a continuous learning process, and I’m preparing to start my masters studies, either in sculpture or intermedia-art.
I would like to thank you again for giving me this opportunity, and hope we will collaborate again in the future.
Would you like to tell us something about your artistic as well as life background? What inspired you to be in this artistic point in your life when you are now?
I am a design student from Mumbai, India. I have been travelling to different parts of the country to volunteer at Art and Music Festivals. This is how I discovered the beauty of performance arts. After interning at one of the biggest Performance Art Spaces in the country, the HH Art Spaces, I soaked in energies and understood many artists at a personal level, their personalities and their styles of working. I was a mere observer but also a part of the several stories and interactions. I had my first performance in a beautiful environment at Studio 365, with supportive artists. I think environments often have the biggest influence on our minds to be able to create.
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about your identity as a participant of the visual culture?
.Udhaar (Borrow) is a performance by Murari Jha that I have been fascinated by since I saw him perform. His performance to me was a beautiful chaos of personal narrative with hypothetical truths, I believe that he also combined his personal fantasies with real physical pain as his execution of this story was with a clutter of furniture, where his use of body with the mess of wood and metal created a moment of stillness with himself and the audience. He would spend hours in a position with a single piece of furniture, living the moment minute by minute, not seeming to dilute his thoughts with the past and the future – I suppose that is what a piece of performance art often does to its creator.
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
Memory, rather the wish to relive memories has been a strong stimulant for my work. My past - of running and jumping around spaces and being really open and active with my body is a piece of nostalgic experience that I wanted to bring back into my life, by breaking away from mental barriers that had made me still and unstirring.
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?
I have no technique as I am still exploring and experimenting with concepts and their ways of execution. However, I do enjoy using already existing spaces and playing with their character.
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
Since I have just begun the journey with performance art, I am at a stage where I first need to spend time with myself only, where I make art from myself which surrounds my mind. This is a form of self-involvement to a point where I first understand myself deeply, without being influenced by an audience. This is a phase where I have been evaluating my movements and decisions with environments created by people and circumstances; acting as inspiration for my work – with little effect during the performance. At the same time, the audience has had some form of an immersive experience where they have taken interest in the movements, but also becoming static and unaware as I become static with my movements.
Until others see it, artwork is not truly finished. A dialog about a painting brings it to life for both the artist and the viewer. These conversations allow me to see more deeply into the work, to realize the subconscious elements I may have added. For instance, I painted a barren gray landscape with strange, colorful plants growing in clumps on the surface. I thought it was just a scene from a dream. But, my husband looked at it and said it reminded him of middle school. As soon as he told me, I could see it too, the image resonating so much stronger for me than a simple alien-scape. I can remember that day, at eleven years old, starting at a new school, feeling so alone and alien in a gray world, while the other kids huddled together in their social groups.
Each person who looks at "Middle School Cliques" will have a different reaction to it, a personal story or experience that describes the painting for them. I don't want to define it for them, but instead, have each of us share our ideas with the other.
ht one. Once I have the pose that strikes me (YES!) I take it from there, drawing up a rough sketch adding patterns and geometrical shapes which contrast the lines of the main silhouette.
From there I sketch my plan on to a blank canvas (always making changes and additions to the new layout). Once I am happy with that I start to add colour. My fine lines are all executed without masking; using a small brush, even hand, and steadfast concentration. Then I apply layer upon layer of colour until I achieve beautiful unyielding saturation and impeccable print-like quality.
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
The emotional and intellectual relationship of my work always begin as two very seperate things. At first glance, my art may seem frivolously aesthetic .The colours are vibrant, and deliciously arresting. But then you look a little closer, even through the simplicity of the block colour and basic lines of geometry and pattern, there is always a story within… and that is when the emotional and intellectual perception of my art merge and the true beauty is discovered.
olted by the Thought of Known Places… Sweeney Astray” by Joan Jonas was one of the first performance installations that really made a huge impact on me. I was living in Paris during this time, in the early 90s, with a lot of influences from different cultures. It became the starting point of my own work. Joan Jonas practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of ritual, and the authority of objects and gestures. Jonas continues to find new layers of meanings in themes and questions of gender and identity that have fueled her art for over thirty years. She is a great inspiration still today.
It is impossible to avoid the topic of body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity that we see in your practice. What is the function of the identity appearing in your artworks – is it a canvas used to present your ideas or rather the subject of the art? What inspired you to use this as a theme in your practice?
I have been developing my visual imagery since I began studying art and film - from conceptual thinking, composition, using light and colour in different ways, through all the different techniques I've utilised over the years in my work and in my collaborations with stage artists such as dancers, musicians and actors. My approach is always developing through exploring these things. Visual imagery in essence is your way of experiencing what you see and transforming it. This is my world that I want to share and express through my art. The body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity is part of this visual imagery, the emotional essence in my practice. Always present and always developing in different themes and projects.
Marina Abramovic stated: You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of
which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'Can you relate anyhow to these words?
de-identify myself, by losing my roots, my culture, I would be very happy. Unfortunately the human being does'nt choose the place where he is born. He grows up in a society that automatically identifies, through education, culture, family... More than ever I think it's more important to go on a way of self-knowledge with the aim to meet “the other”.. This other without which we can not exist. It's the same for the artist. It is more important for me to be focused on my practice than to try to define it according to esthetic criteria of identification. It's probably the reason i like to remember the painter Matisse who said or wrote that an artist must never be prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation.
Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that has influence the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?
All my way is influenced by encounterings.
It began by the meeting with my professor of literature at school. More than giving French or Literature classes, she brought us to discover texts, movies, plays, visual artworks and to think about on what we saw or read.. Thanks to her that I met Pierre Vincke, a theatredirector who was worjink in the tradition of Grotowski ... Both of them have led me to go to theater school. In this school I had meetings. Meetings with artists but also and especially human beings that made me discover. I always need o discover rather than to master a practice. It's probably the reason my encounter with Monica Klingler and Boris Nieslony was decisive for me and led me on the path of Performance Art which is a form still difficult to define. Each performance artist has a different definition of what it is...
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
No I don't have a specific artwork that has influenced my artistic practise but many.
I'm influenced by some philsophers as well as poets or musicians or dancers or visual artists but also by some places or landscapes or atmospheres ... For some years, I was used for example to go to India where I was used to follow some traditionnal muscians or to learn bharatanatyam and practice vipassana meditation... Of course this experience has impacted my art work.... This brought me to think and work differently... My experience in India brought me to discover traditionnal strong art and paradoxally to the way of Performance Art. But there I see one common point: to make no separation between art and life and to be here and now, without projection on the future.
It's difficult for me to speak about race and ethnic identity. But I can say that today we miss more and more this notion of “to be here and now” which is more present in some cultures ... By practising Performance Art, it's my way to be connected to this way of thinking. And even in this field actually it's more and more difficult. The society and the art world brings us more and more to plan in advance, to define our work, more than to do. Just to do. To do what we deeply need.
And of course, my encountering with Black Market International and later the notion of Open Source or Open session via PAErsche have also a big impact on my work. When we go on that, each of us perform by sharing time and space but without trying to convince each other on some common way. This is for me a wonderfull way how we can meet each other, regardless of our origin, our race or our “identity”...
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
My memory is clearly a starting point to create. I don't have any autobiographical message. I use my personnal experience ( what I feel , what I see, what I learn, what I ear...) to work. It's a motor or a material. I'm not able to paint, so I can't do something with red or white or yellow or black colors. All I have is life, a body alive. And I need to do something with that...
My sensation about life sometimes is too intense then I need to transform this intensity in some action. Some artistic action... If people can take something from this action this is great... but I don't want to give them “a specific message” or to control the translation of my experience.