Bengal Nights

Romanticized Imagination of the Otherness

Dana 3. studenog 2023 godine u sklopu programa Europske prijestolnice kulture Temišvar 2023., u prostoru Cazarma U otvoriti će se izložba Bengal Nights: Romanticized Imagination of the Otherness. Kustos izložbe je dr. sc. Josip Zanki, a obuhvatiti će radove Ivana Fijolića, Manola Cocha, Leonarda Martíneza, Daniele Leyva, Alejandre Gutierrez Ballón, Esneidera Gamboe Burbana, Bojana Gagića, Luise Kloos, Larise Crunțeanu i Megan Dominescu.

 

The exhibition’s concept Bengal Nights: Romanticized Imagination of the Otherness are based on Mircea Eliade’s misunderstanding of Hindu culture, family hierarchy, gender issue and cast structures. As an interpreter of religions and religious, Mircea Eliade created one of the most important theoretical frame; on Sacralisation of the Space, still applicable in cultural anthropology and ethnology. Novel Bengal Nights (first published in Romanian language year 1933)  is a fictional love story  between Eliade, who was scholar in India on age 22, and the 16th year-old Maitreyi Devi, artistic scholar of the famous poet Rabindranath Tagore. Devi became a well known writer, and found accidentally in conversation with Eliade (Romanian) friend Sergui, year 1972 that she is well-known in Romania and that story on ‘romance’ with Eliade was published a long time ago. After meting Eliade in Chicago for several times, she wrote a novel It Does Not Die (published 1974) in response to Eliade’s version of their complex relation.

Example of Eliade’s and Devi’s emotional experience and cultural trauma is a proper starting position for interdisciplinary art work analysing colonial past, postcolonial perspective and notion of Other. This exhibition is focused on imagination, representation and perception of Other and Otherness (represented symbolically as Eliade and Devi) through two opposite culture and lenses; Latin American and East/Middle European. On other side, Latin America and East/Middle Europe are not only opposite, they are eternal liminal spaces, periphery spaces with traumatic history and constant change of political and social environment; real place of Otherness. This two ‘different’ position over loop, communicate, misunderstand and react to each other as Eliade and Devi did. Art works are based on land art experience, participative artistic practice, sound installation and collaborative research process. Connecting link of the exhibited work is the transformation of sculpture and the object’s materials into natural elements which creates a spatial intervention in the exhibition space of ‘U’ Barracks.

The exhibition brings together Mexican artists Manolo Cocho, Leonardo Martínez, Daniela Leyva, Peruvian artist Alejandra Gutierrez Ballón, Colombian artist Esneider Gamboa Burbano, Croatian artists Bojan Gagić and Ivan Fijolić, Austrian artist Luise Kloos and Romanian artists Larisa Crunțeanu and Megan Dominescu. The exhibition is organised in three thematic parts, installed in three rooms—cells, of ‘U’ Barracks.

The first part of exhibition Body and Trauma brings together works of Ivan Fijolić, Bojan Gagić and Alejandra Gutierrez Ballón. Ivan Fijolić sculpture Noun (2022) and light box (without title, 2007) are created in two opposite media, classic sculpture and light object, re-thematising idea of ‘western’ human body archetype through the opposition of dwarf figure and face of a young male. Bojan Gagić sound work Interieur (2011) consists of the recordings of three electric circuits present his family history as the story of Otherness and Other connected only with electric.  Gagić work extends spatiality of the cell, and convert place in Barrack in the cabinet of miracle. Alejandra Gutierrez Ballón video work Germinal Matrix (2007) is a new reading of Franz Fanon’s critique of mask (in Ballon interpretation mask is form of social art). Work, created as video documentation of performance is symbolically research position of the body, skin, race, and colonisation elements in culture, using mold and the idea of the face as persona.

The second part of the exhibition Landscape as Culturalised Space display works of Manolo Cocho, Leonardo Martínez, Daniela Leyva and Larisa Crunțeanu. Manolo Cocho (prints, 2023) and Leonardo Martínez (prints, 2023) present photography’s and photographic documentation of works created in the new Sacred landscape in Mexico and Croatia. Artists intervened by observing nature, using walking as the primary method of perception and placing natural elements as artistic material. Their circular installations (2023) extend landscape interventions to the floor of Barracks, use sand and stones and establish a sacred space, a space of liminality and transition. Leonardo Martínez present his participative practice with Rogelio Avecado Medina and Josip Zanki, spatial intervention Teacher (2023) created in the Wirkuta Desert as part of pilgrimage path and artists’ research of psychedelic experience of space. Opposite to Cocho and Martínez Arcadian landscape is Larisa Crunțeanu’s and Daniela Leyva video works. Video 12 Years (Larisa Crunțeanu, 2022) as the artist states “written in the style of a bad commercial, the work covers 12 years from the life of a fictional character” present dichotomy of East European life; dream of Western consumerism and reality of Eastern abandoned places and trash storage. Contrary to Crunțeanu, Daniela Leyva in her video work (without title, 2022) is not showing illusion, she is documenting space as Mexican trauma landscape, as the cartels territory of death and crime.

Third part of exhibition Image of the Other brings together works by Luise Kloos, Esneider Gamboa Burbano and Megan Dominescu. In her work Glocal Nature Luise Kloos (2023) present two natural artefacts, limestone from Dachstein mountain in Austria, Kelp plants from Atlantic Ocean in a form of site specific and two ink drawings on Chinese rice paper, appropriating natural objects and changing their context. Tears Mix with Rain (2022) by Megan Sominescu ironizes stereotype on others, creating the female figure of undefined race with red hair in an expressionistic Scream gesture. Esneider Gamboa Burbano in his work Tecno-Chamán (2019) is appropriating and transforming old pre-Columbian Muisca ritual using the element of water as purification tool and creating new Sacred space.

Exhibition Bengal Nights: Romanticized Imagination of the Otherness displays material and immaterial object in the space symbolically replacing the presence of two human bodies (Others, Eliade and Devi), converting exhibition settlement into a dramatic spatial intervention. Space of imagination in art works becomes real physical space, and place in landscape is not only trace in natural process, it creates mark of our cultural memory.

Biography

Larisa Crunțeanu artistic practice as performer, video artist and sound collector moves from reality to fiction in an endless conversation with the viewer. Many of her projects  reflect on the notion of collaboration and the ideas existing behind objects and stories. Her works were shown in important institutions such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, SAVVY Berlin, Zacheta Project Room Warsaw, RKI Berlin, Museu deArte Brasieira – MAB FAAP, São Paulo.

Manolo Cocho (born in Mexico in 1968), studied at the National Fine Arts School of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of México). He is a freelance artist, curator, and researcher, and Art, Science, and Complexity project coordinator at the C3 Complexity Science Centre of the UNAM. For more than thirty years he has created works of art in the various media.

Megan Dominescu is a visual artist, living and working in Bucharest, Romania. She graduated from the Department of Painting at the National University of the Arts, Bucharest in 2018. Dominescu’s works are in public collections such as Contemporary Art Museum Bucharest, ING Tech, Santozeum Museum Santorini and private collections collection.

Ivan Fijolić (born 1976, in Zagreb, Croatia) is a contemporary Croatian artist working primarily in the medium of sculpture. He lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia. To date Fijolić has exhibited at some 30 group and 17 solo exhibitions. He has three realized public sculptures: Foundation Batta, Zlín, the Czech Republic, Black Foot, in the Park of Sculptures, Vrsar, Croatia, and the Mostar Bruce Lee statue, in the town of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bojan Gagić, multimedia artist, born in 1969, lives and works in Zagreb. He is the author of a number of exhibitions, installations and performances in Croatia and abroad. At the end of the nineties he was systematically involved in sound art and field recording and signed the technical realization of theatre, film and music festivals. He is also the author of music for short experimental and animated films as well as lighting and sound design for theatrical performances.

Esneider Gamboa Burbano has a Master degree in Fine Arts (Faculty of Arts, National University of Colombia, Bogotá). He works as performance artist, photographer, illustrator and cultural manager, interested in community work applied to the teaching area and aimed at people of all ages. He lives in Bogotá and participate in various exhibitions and projects in Colombia and Europe.

Alejandra Gutierrez Ballón (Arequipa, Peru 1975) hold PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales – EHESS) in Paris and has a Master degree from the CCC Research-based Master programme (Critical Curatorial Cybermedia Studies), Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD). Currently teaching at the Faculty of Arts of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). She lives in Lima and works between the various regions of the country and Europe.

Luise Kloos was born 1955 in Judenburg (Austria), lives and works in Graz. She works with graphics, paintings, video, installations and performances and has a broad international network. Since her studies at the University of Graz (Architecture) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna her work is focused on subjects like society, human conditions and cultural background. Luise Kloos is a member of the European Cultural Parliament since 2016

Daniela Leyva (San Luis Potosí, México, 2002) artist, musician and audiovisual experimenter. Artist with principal interest in documentary photography, investigation, archive, video, and social and political struggles. Her work mainly includes concepts about identity, everyday life, self-representation and memory. Student of Contemporary Art at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí.

Leonardo Martínez was born in 1987 in San Luis Potosí. He is a professional photographer. He studied at the Centro de las Artes de San Luis Potosí, where he graduated in 2009. He is a professor at the Arts Academy, a researcher, and a conceptual artist. He lives in San Luis Potosí and participate in artistic projects all over Mexico, America and Europe.

Josip Zanki (born 1969, in Zadar, Croatia) is visual artist, cultural anthropologist and curator.  He graduated from the Graphic Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1994. In 2016 he completed his Postgraduate Doctoral Studies in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. He received his PhD with a thesis entitled “Anthropological Conceptualisation of the Space in Thangka Painting and Contemporary Art Practices“. He has realized numerous workshop, exhibitions and curated projects in Europe and Latin America. He taught at the University of Zadar 2009 to 2017 and at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas 2016 and 2017. Since 2017 he has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Since 2018 he has been vice president of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists, oldest and largest institution of its kind in Croatia and the entire region, established in 1868. He has been a member of the European Cultural Parliament since 2011. He lives in Zagreb and works in Europe, Asia and Latin America. His curatorial projects and workshop include institutions and spaces as: Schau Fenster, Berlin; Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin; Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; C3 UNAM, Mexico City; Aether, San Luis Potosí; MAAM, Roma; National University of Colombia, Bogotá.