LIFELIKE:DEMO 2021

collaboration with Pablo Ramirez Gonzalez

is a tryptic work which aims to rethink the afterlife of animals in the context of displacement. Hunting, taxidermy and taxonomy are seen as practices that deny the life of some species in order to display, study, and appropriate their bodies, claiming the superiority of human kind over nature.

The collection of dissected animals and skulls from the palace of Morawa was reconstructed in the form of 3D digital objects and reorganised in a sequential series of videos, accompanied with pictures, paintings and etchings from the collection and narrations about hunting extracted from interviews. The videos and the installation tries to give a second read to the history of displacement in Morawa which can be viewed as a territory in dispute. The project aims to include the perspective of animals as cohabitants of that place and historically rooted subjects that are able to create their own narratives of belonging.

The site-specific section of the project called lifelife: 93jahrealt was divided in two interventions - an installation inside the kitchen of the castle of Morawa and a 3D projection inside a dead tree in the forest that surrounds the area; a possible ritual of returning and commemoration. The third video lifelike:demo was created as a stand alone audio-visual experience that can be projected in different spaces without propagating further the local specific meaning but can address further the questions of ownership, totem display and power.

installation view at Morawa Palace, Poland, photo documentation by Edgar De Poray

LIFELIKE:AS WE WAIT 2022

collaboration with Pablo Ramirez Gonzalez

In LIFELIKE: as we wait we have decided to create a waiting room. An installation space to rethink the dynamics of modernity through the process of slowdown and delay, asking ourselves the role that rural life plays as a transitory stage in the process of development or a space of resistance to emancipate time from the stream of production. 

We intentionally omitted to discuss the topic of the usually considered majestic animals and decided to focus on birds, bees and dogs as they are a huge part of our current ecosystem influencing its dynamics, resources or their scarcity.

installation view at Bastionul Tabacarilor, Romania

LIFELIKE:INVOKING GHOSTS 2023

collaboration with Pablo Ramirez Gonzalez

LIFELIKE INVOKING GHOSTS brings together works created in Morawa, Poland (2021) under the name of LIFELIKE: DEMO and its next-year chapter LIFELIKE: AS WE WAIT, made in residence at Acasă la Hundorf, Romania (2022) in a site-specific installation, adding found objects in nature like skulls, teeth and whey. 

installation view at La Cave, French Institute Cluj, Romania

WE SPEAK OUR OWN 2021

site specific installation: impermanent words carved on rocks (grass, moss, soil, trees) - 2021

We speak our own is an act against human ownership to deploy nature in their socio- economical and political fights - even if it is consciously engraved by human action.

During an evening discussion, Melitta - the last heiress of the Morawa palace - shares with me the fact that now, in this region, the stones are at also at peace: they speak both Polish and German language.
The discussion resembled with one of the longest debates in my home region (Transylvania, Romania), where Romanian and Hungarian inhabitants were claiming that nature (birds, trees, stones, etc.) where even more speaking or singing in their language, denying each other’s right to be and inhabit.

The site-specific installation comes as a moment- based reminder that the nature might have its own language that we might not know and we have no right to invoke it in our divisive conversations, especially for land owning, life-threats, displacement, othering nor any kind of hatred and forced action, no matter its magnitude. 

Aware of its implications, english - as a language of expression - was chosen to ease the message.

STATES UPROOTED 2017

shot during my travels in between 2012-2017, using personal archive and combining 8mm film with digital files, states uprooted tries to challenge the idea of rituals in transition, identity and it's perception on different lands: Romania and USA.

MILK USAGE STATION (M.U.S.) 2015

collaboration with Rohan Thakore & Lily Fein

part of Canary Lab and presented at the collective show Eating is a Cultural Act, Smith Hall Gallery, Syracuse, NY, USA 

M.U.S. aims to convey the idea of cultural heritage, family linage and moreover cyclicality while offering a gallery experience related to food and its easy, home-making process. 

The installation provides two tables, one for display and one that replaces the “family dinning table” where the guests can sample the foods exhibited on the first table. The main produce is milk and its derivate than can be easily made at home, recipes that passed from a generation trough another by word of mouth or handwritten notebooks.  

FARM FRESH 2015

still performance, 40' Comstock Art Facility, Syracuse, NY, USA

the 40 minutes standing performance tried to illustrate the food system hierarchy in USA and the "induction" of perfection regarding the food consumption. this usually comes with the price of underpaid pickers and forced waste in the farms production