Olga ȘTEFAN and Andrea BELLU: Așa se scrie istoria…!? / So This Is How History Is Written……!?
Presentation and talk with Olga Ștefan and Andrea Bellu
It is said that Romania is an antisemitic country without Jews. Since 1989 there has been an alarming trend to rehabilitate former Legionari (Romania’s antisemitic fascist party during the war) as anticommunist heroes, while antisemitism is still on the rise despite the absence of a significant Jewish population. Once the home of over 750,000 Jews (about 4.2% of the country’s entire population before the war), fascist extermination policies during the war and the nationalization and “Rumanianization” policies of the Romanian Communist Party after the war has led to the disappearance and departure of almost all but 11,000 of them.
Yet the dominant discourse on Romanian history does not recognize these uncomfortable facts.
Through personal narratives and oral histories, the generation who experienced these events not only bares witness to correct the lacunae in contemporary discourse, but can more easily establish relationships with the present generation otherwise so disconnected from its country’s past.
In Büchsenhausen, curator and critic Olga Ştefan will discuss her curatorial approach to the development of the contemporary art exhibition “Fragments of a Life”, a multi-site show taking place in June 2016 about the 1941 pogrom of Iaşi (Romania). The exhibition addresses traumatic historical events, the role of memory and storytelling in constructing and deconstructing historical facts, the reliable and unreliable narrator in oral histories, and survivors’ challenges in recounting traumatic events.
Andrea Bellu’s exhibition Collection of Trials to Describe Reality tracks similar questions and a conversation with the artist about her work and practice will follow.
An event within the frame of the artistic research Bad Words by Andrea Bellu.
Andrea Bellu develops her artistic works as installations: writing, drawing, taking photographs and making films. She often works together with other artists and scientists. Starting out from post-colonial, migrant and feminist perspectives, she attempts to insert gaps and disruptions into the predominant narrations of history.
Olga Ştefan was born in Romania, grew up and established her career in Chicago, and since 2009 has been based in Zurich. Her curatorial work includes Laughter and Forgetting in Bucharest; Few Were Happy with Their Condition at Kunsthalle Winterthur, Motorenhalle, Dresden and Gallery 400, Chicago; Blurred Lines and Showtime at ABContemporary, Zurich; and Drawing Protest at Shedhalle Zurich, among many others. She has also developed solo shows with artists Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Ştefan Constantinescu, and Keren Cytter. Olga regularly contributes to ArtReview, Flash Art, Sculpture Magazine, Art in America, and ArtSlant and other international publication.
Location
Künstler:innenhaus Büchsenhausen