Exhibition at Mucem questions notions of identity and identification through different motif

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Exhibition at Mucem questions notions of identity and identification through different motif
Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Isa, por ës homou vogymuk (We are all dust and ashes), 2017-in progress © Courtesy of the artists.



MARSEILLE.- The exhibition “Persona. Works by Romanian artists” questions notions of identity and identification through different motifs, such as the mask. It first considers the links between ethnographic heritage and rites of folklore and mythology, before proposing a broad critical examination of national, cultural, and ethnic affiliations.

The Latin term “persona” has had an ambiguous development, from its original meaning to its current semantic applications in Latin languages, leaving the field wide open to a broad interpretation of what “person” and “character” can mean today, especially given the virtual avatars of new technologies.

Made up of different stories that question the nuances between local particularity and universal character, the exhibition “Persona” presents a panorama of the most significant artistic engagements of Romanian art today. Artists of the diaspora, artists living and working in Romania, artists of different generations, artists of different ethnic origins, artists using a wide variety of techniques – all contribute to this exhibition, combining their points of view on contemporary visual cultural production.

The main themes of the exhibition are, on the one hand, the incontestable capacity of societies to cultivate a myth and preserve their history and, on the other hand, the permanent reinvention or fictional rewrite based on these stories. To better judge the reality and authenticity of what is shown in the exhibition, it is useful to begin thinking about the ability of a visual element to tell a story and for it to create a timeless space. Indeed, by removing the boundaries between history and the present, the works that are on display make possible the reconciliation between opposing discourses. This is especially noticeable in Anca Munteanu Rîmnic’s series of photographs Simulanta, where the struggle of a character pulling, stretching, and repelling a traditional Moldovan rug represents the metaphorical struggle between the weight of inherited traditions and the need to break free.

By exploring the Romanian funds in the collection preserved at the Mucem, it soon became clear that the mask motif was the most recurrent and also the most fascinating recollection of ancient customs and popular traditions. Ethnologist Ioana Popescu, a researcher at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest, emphasizes that the mask covers the faces of people for the sole purpose of liberating them: wearing the mask, “the individual does not separate themself from – but rather moves towards – something.” For her, the value of rituals involving masks lies in their “ability to dissolve the opaque curtain that separates one person from another, one world from another world.” The mask thus erases the laws of time and space, belonging to the domain of ancient cosmogonic rituals, ceremonies, and pagan rites.

From ritual and magical practices to subsequent social usages, communities practicing these types of collective rites generally connect them to life and death at key moments of human existence and to keep evil spirits away.










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