12/31/2013

MY YEAR 2013 IN REVIEW




December – MURANO/ ITALY
Premio Murano 2013 – Scuola del Vetro Abate Zanetti
WINNER of the PREMIO MURANO 2013 (Fusing Section) together with glass-master Flavio Fuga/ Italy for the project THE THREE POST-NUCLEAR GRACES

December – TIMISOARA/ ROMANIA
Professional Artist’s Annual Exhibition – Art Museum

December – TIMISOARA/ ROMANIA
New Angels New – Calpe Gallery

November –  TIMISOARA/ ROMANIA
SOLO SHOW: A One Hundred Lives Journey – Helios Gallery

NovemberSANTA CRUZ DE LA PALMA/ SPAIN
The 41st International Print Award Carmen Arozena 2013 - Casa Principal de Salazar
October – MADRID/ SPAIN
The 41st International Print Award Carmen Arozena 2013 – Brita Prinz Arte Gallery

October – DENTON, TEXAS/ USA
Parallel MomentTAD Gallery

September – CANDAL/ PORTUGAL
Papergirl Portugal Project

September – IASI/ ROMANIA
The Cross – Golia Monastery

September – KLAIPEDA/ LITHUANIA
The International Project of Caligraphy & Art of PenmanshipCulture Communication Center

September – EVORA/ PORTUGAL
Portas AbertasFórum Eugénio de Almeida

June – BUCHAREST/ ROMANIA
Good Girls. Memory, Desire, Power – National Museum of Contemporary Art

June – RIGNAC/ FRANCE
European Contemporary Print Triennial 2013, L’espace Culturel

March – TIMISOARA/ ROMANIA
Project presentation: The French in Banat. A One Hundred Lives Journey – The University of Timisoara Central Library

March – BUCHAREST/ ROMANIA
Momentum – Aiurart Gallery



12/30/2013

PREMIO MURANO 2013 - Scuola del Vetro Abate Zanetti, Murano/ Italy - December 16th to December 22nd, 2013




The Abate Zanetti Glass School in Murano/ Italy, in collaboration with the Association for the Study and Development of the Culture of Murano organized the Premio Murano 2013. The aim of the Premio Murano is to promote the tradition of Murano glass, bringing together contemporary designers and Murano glassmakers. This prestigious international competition was organized for the first time in 1984 and was held until 1991. It started again in 2012, after a 21 years break. 

As a general rule, the competition takes place in four phases, respecting the anonimity of the participants. In 2013, in the first phase 274 designers from all over the world presented anonymously their projects, out of which a panel of judges selected 30 works to be reproduced in glass. My project The 3 Post-Nuclear Graces and Ciprian Chirileanu’s Rain Cube were among the 30 projects selected in the second phase. In the third phase the Murano glassmakers (also anonymously) choose from the selected works those they intend to make in glass and in phase four the panel of judges assigned the prizes to the artists and glassmakers, their identities being finally revealed. 
Project submitted anonymously: The 3 Post-Nuclear Graces
 
My project The 3 Post-Nuclear Graces has been selected by two different glass-masters to be reproduced in glass: Flavio Fuga (independent glass artist) and Riccardo Della Gagnoletta (from Vetreria Artiz Murano). In the end Flavio Fuga (glass master) and I (design) received the Premio Murano 2013 for the Fusing section. 

The two different vision of The 3 Post-Nuclear Graces

Project realised by Riccardo Della Gagnoletta (from Vetreria Artiz Murano)


Project realised by Flavio Fuga (independent glass artist) for which the two of us 
received the Premio Murano 2013 - Fusing Section


Details of The 3 Post-Nuclear Graces


The Abate Zanetti Glass School, established in 1862


The Abate Zanetti Glass School Main Hall, December 17th, 2013




Awards Ceremony Premio Murano 2013

Announcing the winner of the Premio Murano 2013 - Fusing Section
for design and glass work



Meeting Flavio Fuga, the glass maestro


With Flavio Fuga, talking about his amazing vetrofusione technique

The happy winners



With Fiorella Corsi, sculptor from Rome, winner of the Lampworking Section


The Premio Murano also has a Junior section for school-children and a non-competing, VIP section. At the 2013 VIP section participated, among others, the London stylist Vivienne Westwood, the italian actor and writer Alessandro Gassmann, the japanese glass artist Hiroko Ueki, the Israelian artist Dror Eshed.


Professional Artist’s Annual Exhibition – Art Museum Timisoara/ Romania - December 8th, 2013 to January 15th, 2014




Roots
photography/ digital processing, 30 x 40 cm
digital print
2013



New Angels New - Calpe Gallery, Timisoara/ Romania - December 3rd, 2013 - January 19th, 2014







My French Angel
photography/ digital processing, 23 x 23 cm
 transfer on silk taffeta
2013



12/15/2013

SOLO SHOW: "A One Hundred Lives Journey" - Helios Gallery Timisoara/ Romania, 14 November - 4 December 2013



As always for my exhibitions, I made several versions of the poster. But as never before, I could not decide between the poster showing the portrait of my grandmother and that of my grandfather. So I had them both printed and distributed. History had separated them once already ... I could not do it myself...




"A One Hundred Lives Journey" is the story of my family from Tomnatic (Triebswetter) with roots in the Lorraine and the Schwarzwald in the 18th century. A history reconstructed from photographs, documents and letters found in an old box which I did not have the strength to open for many years. A late but absolutely overwhelming understanding of what "leaving", "separation", "uprooting" really means. The deportations of my grandparents to Russia, of my  great-grandparents to the Baragan, of my father to the Canal. The duplication which you have to go through when you are forced to live as dictated by HISTORY. But an equally deep understanding that you can return "home" even if there is no home waiting for you, that the power of faith and the survival of the Spirit will save you even when History seems to have taken you away every chance.

An important component of this project was to send works all over the world, enabling the characters and their stories to travel freely, for the first time. So far works from this project have been presented in exhibitions in Romania (Timisoara, Iasi) or selected in competitions and international events (Rignac/ France, Evora/ Portugal, Madrid and the Canary Islands/ Spain, Klaipeda/ Lithuania Lousã and Candal/ Portugal, Denton (TX)/ USA, Lahti/ Finland).



Family Tree, The Family, The History
digital print, 100 x 70 cm

Roots









Roots
digital print, 40 x 50 cm


Roots up to the Sky        

        About my grandfather Ioan Nicolae Renard I knew almost nothing. The only information I had was a photo and a sentence of the court declaring his death on 01.24.1946, at the labor camp nr.1651 in Ufalo/ Russia.
         One morning, a few months ago, I was thinking of him again. That he was probably mistakenly put on the list of 68,000 persons of German origin which were deported to Russia in January 1945, although he was of French nationality. And that he probably died of hunger, cold, exhaustion, helplessness.
        Suddenly, in the middle of my thoughts, a bird powerfully hit the window. I had never experienced something like this before and I wondered if it might be true that birds are messengers of Heaven. The same evening I received absolutely unexpected information about him ... I was told that actually, in that camp, my grandfather committed suicide.


Roots up to the Sky
digital print 40 x 50 cm



Dream Catcher
 
       The Yalta Treaty in February 1945 which put Romania under Soviet influence has dramatically changed the country's history and fate of many families. In 1945, at age 35, my maternal grandfather was deported to Russia along with his brother, his sister and other 68,000 people. A few days after he turned 43, my paternal grandfather committed suicide in labor camp nr.1651 in Ufalo/ Russia. In 1951, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother were 68 and 66 years old when they were deported to the Baragan, along with 40,320 other people, being forced to live in a hole dug in the ground. At 18 my father was sentenced to four years hard labor on the Danube–Black Sea Canal, where nearly 100,000 other people served many years for imaginary guilts. At 19, my mother was expelled from University, like many others in those days. Stories of life told in one phrase. But a phrase heavy as the world itself... or as an endless forest where you don’t feel tour roots anymore and you don't see the sky.



Dream Catcher
digital print 100 x 70 cm


Duplication






Duplication
digital print, 70 x 40 cm

Works selected for the 8th edition of Miniprint Finland 2014


Farewell. Forever.
 
          
March 18th, 1955
.  
           My grandmother Aurelia Prinz says Farewell to her father, Dominic Haman. Recently returned to Tomnatic after four years of deportation to the Baragan, with their house, factory and land confiscated, my great-grandparents were forced to leave Romania permanently. Although my great-grandfather lived until 1964, my grandmother was never granted permission to see him again.

Farewell. Forever.
digital print, 100 x 70 cm

         Selected for the 41st edition of the Premio Internacional de Arte Grafico Carmen Arozena 2013 from Spain. Exhibited at the gallery Brita Prinz Arte in Madrid (what an extraordinary name coincidence!) in October 2013 and at the Palacio Casa Salazar of Santa Cruz from Palma/ Canary Islands in November 2013.



From Russia, with Love

             My grandmother carefully preserved all the letters my grandfather sent her from Russia in a wooden box with a painted lid. I had a hard time deciding if I could dare to read thoughts definitely not addressed to me or if they needed to remain forever closed in that box. I found a letter of encouragement addressed to my grandmother, hastily written on the day of his deportation to Russia; postcards with the ink already faded away but with the "censored" stamp still intense as in the first day; a photo from the camp, where only the eyes remained alive in my grandfather once so handsome; a letter on a parchment so thin that the letters on one side and the other overlapped in a new script, almost incomprehensible; small pieces of paper sewn to each other, to hold as many words as possible. I learned that in Russian "skoro domoi" means "going home soon" and that these words were always pronounced in the hope that one day this will really happen. And I understood that, at some point, the hardest thing in life can be to find a piece of paper to write home.

From Russia, with Love
digital print, 150 x 35 cm


Notre Père

Notre Père

digital print, 50 x 50 cm 

 

Works selected and presented at the International Project of Callygraphy & Art of Penmanship - Callygraphy & New Medias in Klaipeda / Lithuania, in September 2013.

 

 


Notre Père, Vaterunser, Miatyánk, Tatăl Nostru, Pai Nosso (the Lord's Prayer)

           My mother remembers that when she was a child, in Tomnatic the Lord's Prayer was still recited in  French. It was also recited in German, and Hungarian, and Romanian ... but those who felt their roots still alive in the Lorraine of the 18th century had it ancestrally placed it in their souls in French. They left the Lorraine in 1770 hoping for a better life in Banat. They definitely marked a place on the map and they were brutally marked by history. They have come a long way… as a hundred lives ... And the thought of HOME to which you will finally return helps you detach from the body that lives in a hole dug in the ground, pushes wagons in a mine coal, digs the canal, dies of homesickness, or simply dies. It helps you detach from the body and immerse yourself in your Spirit and recite the Lord's Prayer in French, in German, in Romanian. But it really does not matter in what language you say the words... the important thing is that it saves you. Wherever you are.
  

Notre Père

digital print, 100 x 70 cm 

 

  The works in Romanian were shown at the exhibition The Cross at the Golia Monastery in Iasi/ Romania, in October 2013. The ones in French were selected and presented at the International Project of Callygraphy & Art of Penmanship - Callygraphy & New Medias in Klaipeda / Lithuania, in September 2013.
           The works in Portuguese were created in memory of my father who wanted very much to see Portugal but died shortly before the trip. They were exhibited in Portugal, in the streets of Candal and distributed to the people in Lousã, as part of the Papergirl Portugal project in September 2013.

 

 

Images from the exhibition





Each visitor was invited to choose and take home one of the works from the group The Lord's Prayer.





Images from the opening