In 2024, Ploiești holds the title of the Youth Capital of Romania, and the Artown Festival animates the city through an explosion of murals, street interventions and events that bring both the inhabitants of Ploiești and the festival participants who come from various cities and countries closer to art and culture. This edition of the festival includes 16 murals and more than 60 street art interventions, transforming the city into an urban gallery.
Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu is one of the artists involved in the third edition of Artown Festivalwhich took place between October 4-20. His work falls within a personal and autobiographical register and explores topics related to sexual and ethnic minorities. His artistic approach is placed in a feminist ideological context and offers a direct and at the same time empathetic approach to the themes he deals with, everything is built from a sincere and personal perspective, the topics are closely related to his own experiences and the surrounding social questions .
I spoke with Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu about the messages of her art, about gender stereotypes and about the solidarity within the artistic community, whether we are talking about artists or how the public perceives her works.
How do your feminist perspectives influence your choice of artistic mediums in which you work
The use of some means of artistic expression so-called or rather considered bitter by the time minor art has its meaning seen from a feminist perspective. Everything that was related to artistic expression, let’s say, in the technique of the textile object, embroidery, stitching, lace, patchwork, knitting, braiding, etc. it was intended for the domestic, female frame, the woman being over the centuries, let’s say it right, a second-rate citizen who did not participate in the city’s decisions. She was not allowed to go to school in certain moments of history, she was not allowed to hold public offices, to vote, to sit at the same decision-making table for society, with men.
Expression, artistic sensibility within the framework of gender differentiation was allowed to women only in the domestic context, with small (and often dramatic) exceptions. Instead, the major arts, the study (of anatomy too), the sciences, research, the political and economic mechanisms by which society was governed were only allowed to the male figure, to paterfamilias. Well, it is precisely this “modestization”, if I may be allowed the grammatical license!, that gives strength. To have the ambition to make power out of the modest thing, here is the meaning. However, I have not abandoned painting, the queen of the arts, only that for some time now I prefer working in textile art, conceptualized.
What feminist themes do you explore?
I don’t practice political art, I would be very bored, I’m not from the left although I believe in social measures, the feminism I practice in art is one related to the body, to mythologies, cultures and my presence, ours, in the world . The creation of an artist has no meaning if it does not enter into dialogue with society, with peers, the artistic work lives only if it is observed, present in the world. I could name as a theme in my artistic practice the work about the body, intimacy, the analysis from a personal perspective of some histories common to the female gender. The subjects are related to archetypes, feminine symbols like Eve, Virgin Mary, transgender or non-binary women, Mary of Egypt, Medusa, figures that define our European cultural landmarks, in which we grew up.
Diversity in your art
I am proud of the first (or among the first) queer art exhibitions in Romania. I exhibited in 2006, at the HT003 gallery, 36 large photographs, which were portraits of transgender people or transvestites, long before this theme became mainstream. MNAC later acquired and exhibited some of these photographs. I also participated with two art projects located in the queer area in the exhibition Triumph of America curated by KILOBASE BUCHAREST, in December 2021-January 2022. At the space I coordinate, ALERT studio, I have exhibited over time Roma artists with whom I have also produced a book, Karing jas/ Where are you going?but also artists belonging to the LGBTQIA minority, artists who proudly express their belonging to that group.
In recent years, I no longer work on the topic of this diversity, I no longer represent the people from these discriminated groups, I leave the task of self-representation to them. I am an active ally, but on the sidelines if I may say so. It is their voice, they must represent themselves, and we, the privileged majority, must leave them the main stage. The interest you mention is like life, it doesn’t have to be a specific social category or any specific activist action.
Participation in Artown Festival
I hope that people enjoy, get excited, have fun in contact with my artistic interventions in Ploiesti. I have two interventions in the city, on a shop wall and a shield of a notary’s office. It’s an amazing job, a fantastic creative and emulating impulse, which is undertaken by the group that thought and implemented the Artown Festival project. I don’t know yet on a societal level what impact feminist art could have, maybe a sociologist attentive to nuances and changes could describe or simply viewers. We should ask them.
Art and activism
As I said earlier, I do not believe in and do not try to practice political, militant and social activism. When I approached the theme of gender minorities in my art and later in my curatorial activity, since the beginning of the 2000s, it was to tell about an encounter that meant a lot to me, and not to find another theme, nor it wasn’t fashionable then, by the way. If this can be seen as a form of activism, then so be it! I have done a few other projects in the same area, both personal, creative and curatorial, I mentioned above, answering another question.
Apart from this, as a curator and observer of the world, I am interested in the (artistic) situations that relate to the body. I watched, documented and then gave it a stage, a community of people who suspend themselves by hooks, by skin, practice body modifications and work with intense sensations that alternately engage and disengage the body from visceral emotion and spirit. From my perspective, this is art, because it works with concepts related to body aesthetics, putting into the abyss, self-probing and the beauty of movements, it’s performance.
Gender stereotypes
I like being a woman, if I make art that can be read as female, so much the better. Otherwise, the feminism I practice through art is self-representative, it is historically linked to symbolic female characters.
The Feminist Art Community
Solidarity is a precious thing, there is always room for mutual support, alliances are made, they are dissolved, art is not a continuum of pink congratulations. I collaborate with artists I admire, whose work I like, and gather together with people who share my concerns, approaches and interests. But yes, to answer your question, I choose in certain situations to work together only with female artists. Female power!
Source: www.iqads.ro
