The performance-journey “iMigrate. The Biology of Transition” documents from multiple artistic perspectives the journey of Romanian migrants to the Promised Land. In a road-residency to America, Mircea Modreanu, Ilina Schileru, Lucian Sandu Milea and Răzvan Năstase, artists from the independent collective E T A J artist-run space, create on the streets, in the subway, in stations and airports, to exhibit at the end of the road, in the Durden and Ray Gallery in Los Angeles. In September, the group will present this journey of initiation in an exhibition at the E T A J Gallery in Bucharest. They aim for a Los Angeles artists’ group show in Bucharest next year. This project provides a transatlantic dimension to the E T A J artist-run space group, only present at the European level so far.
E T A J artist run-space symbolically recreates the path of Romanian migrants to America, a mixed ethno-cultural space, which hosts tens of millions of people who once yearned for the legendary American dream. How many Eastern Europeans ever dreamed of running away to America? How many still do? How many woke up from their reverie? Perhaps the American dream has always been just a myth, the hope for justice and freedom underpinned by the tormenting illusion of absurd individualism, which makes success conditional on performance alone. A road from zero to a fabulous peak, traveled only with one’s own energy, without the help of family or community. Four artists examine, from a subjective perspective, the latest meanings of this legend, looking for its signs in the gestures and gazes of contemporary travelers to the New World. Maybe they will find alternative dreams, hidden in airports, train stations or the streets of Los Angeles. They travel with no money in their pockets to the fortress of Hollywood welfare, a place where the poor can only wander by chance, bearing the responsibility of their own deprivations here and there. Will this paradise be reshaped by a world troubled by crises, from political, climate and humanitarian ones to the post-pandemic inflationary wave? How is the new global reality shaped by migration, victims of war, asylum seekers, or new class divisions? How are political tectonics affecting artistic environments around the world? Following in the footsteps of the new American Dreamers, the four novice travelers examine, from an artistic perspective, the clues that could herald new meanings of the old story, from the promise of material success or social mobility to contemporary nuances such as new community ideals or the freedom to choose your own way of life. Redefined in a troubled global setting, where nations seem to isolate themselves within their borders, anticipating dark scenarios: crisis and regression.
Heterogeneous images in a collective framework
Imagined under the concept of light-travel art, the performance-journey “iMigrate. The Biology of Transition” brings together multiple points of view and perspectives on migration, including the stories of so many other artists who dreamed, over time, of the West. The flight, the most stressful step into the unknown for those who left home, therefore also for this residence, becomes an essential stage of creation. The Bucharest – Los Angeles route is an ideal observation frame, capable of highlighting the soul of the places that travelers cross with their feet or eyes. Mircea Modreanu works in plaster, inspired by objects picked up from the street, packaging, sticks, cardboard, and all kinds of other small things, which could acquire a relevant meaning only when joined, like puzzle pieces, in a structure with a message. Moving images captured here and there are to become sketches from the plane, anticipating the moment when they will be assembled for casting the works. Ilina Schileru examines the structure of the societal binder, the stories that bind people in a community, the meanings and the keys to the interpretation of the folklore background through which groups build their own definitions, starting from oral culture to the one that is documented and synthesized in alternative forms of knowledge. It takes as reference point children, fairy tales, fictional literature, the way in which people reformulate their reality through a magical prism, in order to then achieve a transfer of responsibility to the outside. From small interviews with some travelers on the plane and airports to discussions about separation, parting, and giving up, works in charcoal will result in a collage of images made in situ, as an assembly of heterogeneous narratives in a collective framework.
Stories from the road are also collected by Lucian-Sandu Milea to outline the “Collector” series, works that mix fragments of urban landscapes, silhouettes of buildings and people, different moments and spaces, superimposed in a crossroads of impossible geometries. On the border between axonometry and perspective, Collector is an exercise in representing a timeless universe. The space and time of this journey overlap, becoming an environment for meeting different cultures, just like the transit areas that inspire them: airport, train station, subway, street. The work thus becomes a collector, a “receptacle”, as this concept is found in Plato’s dialogue, Timaeus.
The photographic documentation of the trip will be handled by Răzvan Năstase, who will realize this project in a dynamic point-and-shoot, street photography, sometimes touristic, other deliberately subjective, and therefore slightly distorted. Photographs also become a way of integration into an unknown, perhaps hostile, but indeed very intriguing space. Mixing contemporary concepts, the artist starts from digital photography, which he translates into reality through analog transfer or cyanotype techniques. In the end, a large-scale work will be made up of small elements, a solution chosen not only to simplify logistics and maintenance but especially for an aesthetic of seriality, like a grid that orders the composition, influencing its perception. Photography is a simple pretext to put a set of skills and values to work in a new space, outside the workshop, outside the city, outside the country, on the other side of the globe.
Can the experience of migration be an asset in becoming an artist?
All the artists who ever emigrated were motivated by the desire to prosper, whether they succeeded in changing the history of art, such as Romanian artists Constantin Brâncusi or Andrei Cădere, or failed and remained anonymous. Simulating the deprivations that migrants often face during the nomadic process, the works that will be exhibited in Durden and Ray‘s space will be made with minimal resources, as much as can be carried by a migrant in an air travel. The materials will occupy a volume equal to that of a maximum 20 kg suitcase, i.e. the usual dowry of those moving towards a new life. At the destination, the group of Romanian artists will build, together with five other American artists, a collaborative exhibition in the space of the Durden and Ray gallery, dedicated to the experience of “translocation”, “re-becoming”, “re-adaptation” and prospecting of a globalizing culture that involves both formative and degenerative qualities. Paraphrasing the hostilities that migrants (including artists who leave their own cultural environments) face towards their final destination, the exhibition becomes an extended space of critical meditation from a multidisciplinary perspective, which questions the socio-cultural coordinates of artistic practices in the (post)pandemic season and the multiple problems facing the whole (art) world today: how will this new social distortion affect us in the long term?
Founded in 2009, Durden and Ray comprises artist/curators who work together to create exhibition opportunities at their downtown Los Angeles gallery, as well as in concert with artist groups and gallery spaces around the world.
Durden and Ray concentrates on small, tightly curated group shows at the gallery, organized by the members, and hosts international artists as part of a commitment to global exchange and alternative networks. The Durden and Ray model expressly overlaps multiple strategies, including the commercial potential and visual identity of a gallery, the democratic structure of an artist group, the potential to create collaborative works of art in the manner of a collective, and the shared financial support of its programs by group members and project partners similar to a nonprofit organization.
Durden and Ray is committed both to individual praxis and to shared aims of curatorial experimentation, visual research, and artistic exchange with international partners.
“iMigrate. The Biology of Transition” aims at the promotion of Romanian culture in an international context, the exchange of experience, and the strengthening of relations between domestic and overseas cultural operators. Part of the themes and resources included in the project will carry national cultural references, be it cinema, visual arts or music – old or contemporary. The exhibition in Los Angeles could be the occasion for many American artists and visitors to have an initial contact with cultural fragments of Romanian origin, treated in an experimental manner.
Meet the Romanian team:
Ioana Bogdan (project manager), Evantia Barca (PR & communications), Gabriela Ferche (financial manager), Ilina Schileru (visual artist, curator, designer) and Mircea Modreanu, Lucian Sandu Milea, Răzvan Năstase (visual artists) & Durden and Ray collaborating artists: Carlos Bertrand Arciega, Ben Jackel, Lana Duong, Daniela Soberman, Steven Wolkoff.
Mircea Modreanu is a visual artist, cultural project manager and gallerist. He attended the courses of the Faculty of Fine Arts at UAD Cluj, and immediately after completing his degree, he reconfigured his route to Bucharest. In 2014 he completed his master’s degree at UNArte’s graphics department and a year later he founded an NGO, representing his debut as a manager of cultural projects. Since 2018, when the E T A J artist-run space project was born, it has organized exhibitions in this space in Bucharest, at 43 George Enescu Street, where it has invited over 200 artists to date. During the lockdown, as a form of documentation and archiving, he started filming interviews with artists that he uploaded to the YouTube channel ETAJ TV; he is the coordinator of E T A J Magazine, a publication launched out of the desire to promote contemporary art and local artists.
Ilina Schileru (b. 1986, Bucharest) is a visual artist, and a Bucharest University of Arts alumnus, having completed her master’s degree in Graphics in 2010. In 2022 she was the curator of the Collateral Event for the Roma representation at the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale, organized by ERIAC (European Institute for Roma Art and Culture).
Member of UAP Romania and founder of the EBienale (in association with the George Enescu Festival and Competition), Ilina Schileru is currently the coordinator of the independent space MNTRplusC, a contemporary art program under the auspices of the National Museum of the Peasant, starting from April 2021. The MNTRplusC program relies on international collaborations between the local Romanian scene and foreign or diaspora artists/curators.
Since 2018, she has collaborated with NGOs to integrate immigrant and refugee children through art programs that she develops in partnership with museums and other institutes (Museum of Recent Art, MNAR, British Council, etc.).
She is part of the ETAJ artist-run space. She exhibited, alongside E T A J, in 5 art fairs in Europe (Milan, Stockholm, Madrid, Budapest, Aarhus) and in 2023 she will complete a project with the Durden and Ray Gallery in Los Angeles.
She writes for ARTA Magazine, Propagarta (Romania) and No Niin (Helsinki, Finland).
She lives and works in Bucharest.
Lucian Sandu-Milea (b. 1986, Sînnicolau-Mare) is a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at UAUIM. He works as an artist (street-art, illustrator and 3D graphic artist), architect and organizer of cultural events. He is a founding member of the Carol 53 project.
Răzvan Năstase (b. 1991) is a graduate of the National University of Arts in Bucharest, department of painting. Currently, he lives and works in Bucharest. He participated in numerous national and international exhibitions. In 2014 he won the 1st prize in the Sofia Biennale “International Student Biennale – Drawing”. Răzvan explores in his art the dialogue between the three primary elements of the two-dimensional image: color, composition, texture. The realm in which the artist manifests is that of purely abstract forms. His approach is essentially minimalist, having its roots in the personal search to understand pure aesthetic thinking in relation to the object of art. The motivation that animates the artist is intrinsic to the artistic act, and spontaneity determines the physical form that soul and mental phenomena receive. Recently, Răzvan Năstase formulates a calculated, technical discourse that sums up the research of light art and laser phenomena. He is interested in how light can lead spaces towards infinite ways of metamorphosis.
This project is co-financed by the Romanian Cultural Institute, through the CANTEMIR Program – funding program for cultural projects intended for the international environment.