Days In Between

Marianna CHRISTOFIDES (*1980 in Nicosia, lives in Berlin) is one of the most internationally renowned contemporary artists from Cyprus. In her film essays and film installations, she addresses juxtapositions of geological and socio-historical narratives as well as the (mis)use of the concept of nature as a justification for determinist mindsets that attempt to obscure the contingent character of things and cultural facts. In her first solo exhibition in Romania, Christofides shows the multimedia installation Days In Between, a thorough reconfiguration of the eponymous single-channel film essay she initially produced in 2015. The new version takes the shape of a multi-channel installation consisting of 16mm synchronized projections and an audio work articulated in a manifold spatial mise-en-scène. The installation combines existent footage with recent material shot in Bucharest in spring 2019, staged around the event of the devastating Vrancea earthquake from 1977.

The project began as a search for places where boundaries remain inevitably indefinite due to geographical and topographical circumstances. The artist was interested in the relationship between the metaphorical but also political rhetoric that characterizes the ‘social nature’ of the Balkan region as a fracture zone, fault line or epicenter of major (historical) tremors, and the seismological facts that do not necessarily coincide with this assessment. After repeated visits, the irretrievable loss of a large part of the footage filmed over several years forced the artist to return again to these places, only to discover that they had already changed to such an extent that a recapture was no longer possible. Consequently, the attention shifted to processes of loss and disappearance, to the ephemeral of both the imaginary and the material. The result on display opens up an unconventional view on the psycho-geographic complex of Southeastern Europe along fragments of perception and thought that go beyond the stereotypical imaginary of the West about the past and present of the region.

The exhibition is an exclusive cooperation with the Fellowship Program for Art and Theory at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck/Austria.

Artist: Marianna Christofides
Curator: Andrei Siclodi
Coordinators MNAC: Sandra Demetrescu, Alexandru Oberlander
Cooperation Partner: Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck/Austria
Supported by: Institute for Foreign Relations (IfA), Germany, Federal State of Berlin, Ministry of Education and Culture, Republic of Cyprus
Special Thanks: Muzeul Naţional de Istorie Naturală Grigore Antipa, Muzeul Naţional de Geologie, Galeria Plan B, Cinelab Romania, Goethe Institute Bucharest

Andrei SICLODI (*1972 in Bucharest) is a curator, writer, editor and cultural worker whose theoretical research focuses on forms of critical-emancipatory knowledge production in art. He is director of Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen in Innsbruck and founding director of the Fellowship Program for Art and Theory which takes place there. He is also editor of the publication series „BÜCHS‘N’BOOKS – Art and Knowledge Production in Context“ and producer of the monthly radio broadcast „Büchs’n’Radio“ on Radio Freirad.