The Art Cell presents to the public a new blind live painting performance-experiment, on October 15, 2024 (on the occasion of World Blind Day). The event will take place starting at 15:00, at the Bucharest School for the Visually Impaired (str. Austrului no. 33) and public access is free.
In continuation of a series of artistic performances started in 2018 by Celula de Artă, seven artists who want to push the limits of their imagination and participate in a complex exercise of empathy take part in Blind Seven, a challenge to explore and overcome limits imposed by the main sense used in the visual arts: sight. The main element of the event is an artistic performance inspired by the Dada movement, in which seven artists will successively paint a single work, without seeing what those before them have done.
The Blind project was born in 2018 in the Art Cell, at the suggestion of Daniel Loagăr in the Blind Four variant. It was followed by Blind Five in 2022. The third Blind performance took place in November 2023, at the Students’ House of Culture, as part of the Lunea la Pod event and brought together six artists, so Blind Six.
Blind Seven is set to pick up the structure of previous iterations, aiming to take it to a new level. Keeping the performance of painting in the absence of sight in its original formula, the project will for the first time directly address the blind public, wanting as much involvement as possible, both through participation as spectators and within the activities undertaken, specially adapted to their needs. In this sense, during the painting performance, in addition to the live music improvised by the actor and musician Marin Grigore, blind people will have at their disposal headphones through which the process of materializing the work on the canvas will be narrated in a synesthetic language.
Artists participating in Blind Seven were selected following an open call. They are: Alex Manea, Alexandra Teletin, Anastasia Apetrei, Diana Bleiceanu, Evghenia Gritsku, Mara Malinovski and Teodora Elena Grindei. The curator of the exhibition is Adriana-Elena Borună.
From an experiment addressed to artists, with Blind Seven, the concept evolves towards an inclusive experience on multiple levels: on the one hand, the challenge for the painters involved remains a live and intense core of the event, but at the same time, through the contribution of the curator Adriana-Elena Borună, who is a blind person, and through the public participation of several blind people, the experience opens up to a public segment very little served by the field of visual arts in Romania. This aspect is also developed beyond the Blind Seven performance itself, through the tactile art exhibition made by the artists involved in the performance, whose opening will take place during the event and which will remain open to the public for 2-3 weeks .
Program:
15:00 – Exhibition opening of tactile artworks made by the artists participating in the performance (audio support played through headphones, complementary to each work).
16:00 – Workshop-Presentation, in which Adriana Borună, Andreea-Eliza Petrov and two other blind people will have an open dialogue with the artists and the public about the way blind people relate to the everyday world, to art and, especially , to visual art.
17:00 – Workshop with the public, where participants will learn more about what a performance is, its history, and will have the opportunity to paint themselves blind.
18:00 – Painting performance in the absence of sight (Blind Seven) and musical performance by Marin Grigore (live audio support, during which the blind people will hear what is happening on the canvas in headphones).
After participating in the event, but also watching the resulting digital photo-video products, the public will be able to gain a new perspective on contemporary visual art, but also on blind people and their integration in our everyday world and in the world of visual art, and these from then they will be able to experience the previously inaccessible art in a new, fresh and personalized way.
Blind Seven is produced by Celula de Arta.
The Art Cell is an independent artist-led cultural project that manifests itself in multiple permanent or temporary contemporary art spaces. The project was born from the desire to promote emerging creators in contemporary art. Most of the artists exhibited and encouraged are students, masters or recent graduates. The cell has in its portfolio over 200 events organized or realized in collaboration, covering almost all artistic mediums: painting, graphics, sculpture, mixed media, installation, assemblage, new media, fashion design, performance, concerts and magazine launches.
The Blind Seven project is co-financed by the Capital City Hall, through ARCUB, within the “Bucharest 565 Urban Connections” 2024 Program. The content of this project does not necessarily represent the official position of Bucharest City Hall or ARCUB.
Partners: Romanian Blind Association, Bucharest School for the Visually Impaired
Media partners: Radio Romania Cultural, Radio Bucharest FM, Spotmedia, IQads, Days and Nights, B365.ro, Happ.roCărturești, Curatorial, Propagarta, Revista Golan, Ziarul Metropolis, Observator Cultural, The Institute, Zeppelin, Modernism, PRwave, 4arte, Empower Artists, Munteanu.
Source: www.iqads.ro
