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The Accelerator Today podcast aims to generate a different kind of conversation about contemporary art to take it out of its highly cryptic and inaccessible context – as it is generally perceived.
Lucia Ghegu is an artist who is part of the Accelerator. Mentorship and Production for Emerging Artists Programme, but she also participated in the previous mentorship program, rolled-out by Asociația Culturală Eastwards Prospectus. As part of the exhibition Back to Where It All Began, on view at Gaep Gallery from February to May 2023, the artist had an installation of drawings centrally located in the floor area.
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Where do these drawings come from? I noticed boundary between architectural spaces, devices, appliances. I find it an absolutely fascinating universe.
They started from some structures, cages that I started making in 2018/2019, in Rome, following a research project on the Romanian emigrant community in Rome. And although the project had a very sharp structure, I wanted to make artworks that were a metaphor for the experience one has as an emigrant. Then I came up with this solution of cages, traps, a hybrid of each other – which are actually fictional architectural spaces in which you are both trapped and free. And it’s your own call. From there I continued this research on architectural spaces.
The works also have an organic aspect, I could say. Certain fragments seem like body fragments in a way, maybe even from an erotic area.
It’s something coming from my interests and there is another meaning. I wanted them to be looked at freely, perhaps as erotic elements, but also as satellites, spaceships or lamps or whatever and the viewer would like to imagine anything, any connection he/she may create.
I’d like to go back to the fact that you left the country. Perhaps one of the messages of the podcast is that it is feasible to develop coherent and strong art projects here in Romania. Did you leave Romania with high expectations that were not confirmed there, or did you expect something else? What was this experience like for you?
I expected something different in Rome. At the time I left, it seemed to me that Bucharest had a developing art scene, where quite a lot of things were happening and more galleries were appearing, more artist-run spaces, things that I didn’t find in Rome. Instead, it was a city where there were a lot of events happening and it was difficult to get into that system and get attention. The quality of contemporary art wasn’t something that appealed to me that much either.
It must be said that in Italy, the core, at least in terms of galleries, is Milan. There are galleries in Rome, there are galleries in Naples, there are galleries in many cities, some of them very small, that host large galleries. But for those who are listening and don’t know this, Rome is not the centre of contemporary art in Italy.
I knew other artists, my age, who were just as confused. They still came from a very rich history and didn’t know what to do with that history. In Bucharest it seems to me that such a rich context is missing and then you have more freedom, or you can imagine, experiment more, without being stopped by history, by culture.
From what you say, I understand that our challenge to give a strategic dimension to artists’ careers through the mentorship program, paradoxically, perhaps also finds itself in a scene with much more history and that young artists coming out of these institutions, which have a history, in some cases, of centuries, even they don’t know exactly how to approach the contemporary art system and how they should strategize.
I think you have the same problems after you finish college, unless you have a really good school, maybe, but otherwise you’re just as confused, and you struggle just as much to find your place. I don’t think it was any different. Emerging artists in Rome were no different than artists in Bucharest.
Let’s go back to your background because you originally studied Polytechnics. You come from a different kind of background, which again I’m extremely sensitive to, because I don’t have a classic gallerist background, but rather, through a series of good incidents, let’s say, I got into this position. How did you develop your interest in art, over time, starting from something else entirely?
I think I was interested in things, in people. I was very introverted, and I used to observe a lot of what was going on around me and imagine different things or worlds, and at some point I started to draw what I was imagining or find some kind of parallel world through drawing. But I also like mathematics and physics. I was good at mathematics and Polytechnic came quite naturally. I like the technical side or technology. And at some point, the need to make art was stronger than the passion for technology. It doesn’t seem like different things to me. It seems to me that I use my brain the same way when I draw or when I make art and the same way when I solve math problems.
And the experience on the art studies side, how was it in Romania? How did you find yourself making that transition?
I started art school when I was in my third year at Polytechnic, and I was much freer from the rigid and classical system. My expectations from college were rather to find an environment that I could resonate with and feel more confident in, which didn’t happen. I learned illustration and graphic design rather than feeling like an artist. College was a short experience.
Do I think the Accelerator program meets these challenges? What should we change, regarding the format of the program, to develop the idea of a strategic career dimension in a more palpable way?
I don’t know if Accelerator should be an early intervention program, because I find it very well structured for those who have already assumed that they want to make art. And then there’s no doubt about it or I don’t think one of my colleagues would give up making art in the next few years.
I think in college you need to learn basic things – writing an artist statement, talking to a curator, organising exhibitions. Now, if I were in college, I would want to organize exhibitions with my colleagues, including in the studio. It’s a space you have, where you can work and show your work very simply. But that wasn’t something we were thinking about.
Although we can say that the scene has developed in recent years, it’s constantly developing, initiatives are starting, new artists, galleries. What do you think could be done better so that the process is more accelerated or maybe the development is more cohesive, more coherent?
I think the level of education of the public is very low. And then more programs or more opportunities to educate the public would help. Of course, that also comes from the area of museums or art institutions which are very few in our country. I think those things are missing, because it seems to me that even the gallery is a space that you enter, after you have a curiosity about art, I don’t think very many people enter from the street, just in a gallery.
This is something we have observed not only in Romania, but also in all the countries in the region where we are. This lack of cultural infrastructure that leads to a kind of conversational vacuum and people have difficulty relating to the nature of contemporary art, actually, not just an experience of going into a gallery or a museum and having something that makes sense. Hopefully that will change over time. That’s one of the incentives we try to convey through our projects as well. Towards the end of the talk, I’d like to talk a little bit about the future.
What are you working on now, what are your next projects and what are you excited about at the moment?
I’m currently working on a very interesting project with Sebastian Moldovan and Albert Kaan. Sebastian Moldovan has a work for the *Art Encounters Biennial, in which he has also co-opted us. We are going to present some installations together. His theme comes froma parallel or absurd world, where a group of people who have given up on everything that is culture and civilization live. They’re just building fake rocks and basically that’s all kind of back to basics. The idea that excites me is teamwork. It’s the first time I’m working in a group.
And these works will be several installations or groups of installations will be presented at the opening of the Biennale. This collaborative model seems to be an extremely good one, which brings very interesting synergies. And within the programme, we are trying to generate these synergies with art projects in the public space, and we also saw in Ragnar Kjartansson’s artist talk that the idea of collaborating and bringing in artists from different areas, from completely different areas seems to be a direction for the development of art.
Do you think that, if we are to look on the longer term at what contemporary art is as a field, it can become more interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary than we see it, rather mono-block and highly specialized by medium?
Yes, I hope so. For me, art is interdisciplinary anyway and I use my knowledge from Polytechnic University. Nor do I believe in an art that is only classical and you don’t get other notions from another field. I think people need that and artists need to create interdisciplinary artworks and we are evolving in a direction where technology, for example, can no longer be excluded from what we do. I also believe that artists can work better together and that no one is brilliant alone, or no one can create something extraordinary on their own. It’s always a dialogue and an exchange of ideas.
*This episode of the podcast was recorded when Back to Where It All Began exhibition was on view at Gaep Gallery (February-May), before Art Encounters Biennial.