Triumf Amiria: Museum Workings

TRIUMF AMIRIA: Museum Workings is hybridizing and expanding Zina Gallery (Cluj) according to its own imaginary and likeness as a queer museum growing on the fertile ground between a real institution and a utopian construction.

Thus, Museum Workings unfolds as a cluster of solo exhibitions: “TRIUMF AMIRIA LOVE LETTER TO VEDA POPOVICI” — about activism, political imagination and radical fragility, “TRIUMF AMIRIA LOVE LETTER TO MIHAI MIHALCEA” — on disobedient bodies breaking oppressive scripts in public space and pantheons of consumerism, “TRIUMF AMIRIA LOVE LETTER TO IRINA BUJOR” — on empathy, fluid identities and dreamy futures with open eyes; alongside a group exhibition called “CHANGE – EXCHANGE” — developed around subjects such as affirmative synonyms for identities eluding singular definitions, recognition of artistic / curatorial labor, queer bodies, all those through participatory works proposed by Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Apparatus 22 and Georgiana Dobre & Kjersti Vetterstad. Furthermore, “TO CARVE A QUEER HOME” works as a postscript with publications — Themanwithaholeinhistie by Alex Bodea, KILOBASE BUCHAREST A-Z, TRIUMF AMIRIA MANIFESTO — that twist and transform print formats.

Artists

Alex Bodea
Romanian born, Berlin based artist Alex Bodea works at the crossroads of visual art, journalism and poetry. Fueled by a desire to witness and document (fact finding) aspects of urbanity such as everyday street life, passersby typology, social dynamics and interactions. record, she makes use of an artistic language based on drawing and text (written or spoken), both of them stripped down to the essentials.
She also performs selections from her archive. Her drawings are to be spoken out loud.
In her fact finding missions she has collaborated and made visual stories about institutions such as Serralves Foundation, Porto (PT), Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (DE) , Museum of Arts, Cluj (RO), Goethe Institut Bologna (IT), HAU, Berlin (DE), Art Encounters, Timisoara (RO), Asociatia Reciproca, colectiv A, Cluj (RO), Berliner Festspiele (BE), Deutsche Oper, Berlin (DE), Salonul de Proiecte Bucharest (RO), Deutsches Theater Berlin (DE), Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest (RO), and numerous artists, writers and actors. such as Benjamin Verdonck, Salomé Lamas, Ana Moreira, Yevgenia Belorusets, France-Elena Damian, Karl Ove Knausgård and opera director Peter Sellars.
She is the founder of The Fact Finder, an artist-run space located in Berlin which is dedicated to artists whose work relies on field research, archiving, investigation and storytelling.

Apparatus 22 is a transdisciplinary art collective founded in January 2011 by current members Erika Olea, Maria Farcas, Dragos Olea together with Ioana Nemes (1979 – 2011) in Bucharest, Romania. Beginning with 2015 they are working between Bucharest, Brussels and SUPRAINFINIT utopian universe.
They see themselves as a collective of daydreamers, citizens of many realms, researchers, poetic activists and (failed) futurologists interested in exploring the intricate relationships between economy, politics, gender studies, social movements, religion and fashion in order to understand contemporary society. In their very diverse works – installations, performances, text based-shapes, reality is mixed with fiction and storytelling and all merge with a critical approach drawing knowledge & experience from design, sociology, literature and economics.
The work of Apparatus 22 was presented at La Biennale di Venezia 2013, MUMOK, Vienna (AT), BOZAR, Brussels (BE), Museion, Bolzano (IT), Kunsthalle Wien (AT), Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles (BE), Brukenthal Museum Contemporary Art Gallery, Sibiu (RO), Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (DE), Contemporary Art Museum (MNAC), Bucharest (RO), La Triennale di Milano (IT), TRAFO Gallery, Budapest (HU), Futura, Prague (CZ), Ujazdowski Castle CCA, Warsaw (PL), Onomatopee Eindhoven (NL), TIME MACHINE BIENNIAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART, D-0 ARK UNDERGROUND, Konji (BIH), Osage Foundation (Hong Kong), Progetto Diogene, Turin (IT), Closer Art Centre, Kiev (UA), CIAP, Hasselt (BE), Barriera, Turin (IT), Survival Kit festival, LCCA Riga (LV), Autostrada Bienniale Prizren (XK), MAK, Vienna (AT), Steirischer Herbst, Graz (AT), Kunsthal Gent (BE), Drodesera Festival, Dro (IT), etc.

Georgiana Dobre is a dancer and choreographer living and working between Oslo (NO) and Bucharest (RO). She has a BA in Choreography from the University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest, 2010. Her work unfolding critical reflection on themes related to feminism, gender and ecology. At the moment she is concluding her MA studies in Choreography at the National Academy of the Arts in Oslo where she is exploring the relations between environment, imagination, movement and matter.
Georgiana has shown her work at Knips, Bergen (NO), Sørfinnset TV (NO), The National Dance Centre, Bucharest (RO), the Norwegian Film Institute, Oslo (NO), Home Fest, Bucharest (RO), and Centrul Artelor Vizuale Multimedia/FemCAV, Bucharest (RO). In 2018 she had a solo show at Bruksrommet in Stavanger (NO) together with visual artist Kjersti Vetterstad.
Next year she will take part in a dance performance initiated by Louis Schau-Hansen which will be shown at Oslo International Theatre Festival, Palmera in Bergen (NO) and Trauma Bar und Kino in Berlin (DE). Other projects programmed for 2022 include: taking part in Marie Ursin’s dance performance Born Slippy, which will premiere at Spriten kunsthall, Skien (NO), art residency at Lademoen Kunstnerverksted, Trondheim (NO) and a solo show which will be developed in collaboration with Kjersti Vetterstad at Kunstplass Contemporary in Oslo (NO).

Irina Bujor their work is based on formal associations which open a singular poetic vein; multilayered images and installations are highlighting the fragility and instability that question our seemingly certain reality. By applying a wide variety of analytic strategies, Irina Bujor develops a multifaceted practice around ordinary phenomena that tend to go unnoticed in topics she is obsessed with: laughter, gender, factories producing popular culture and things permeating other things.
The work of Irina Bujor was exhibited at Simultan festival, Timisoara (RO), A plus A gallery, Venice (IT), Kunsthal Gent (BE), Porous Space, Vienna (AT), “On Floating Grounds. Ways of Practicing Imponderability” exhibition in the framework of Art Encounters biennial 1st Edition, Timisoara (RO), Galeria Anca Poterasu, Bucharest (RO), PENTHOUSE ART RESIDENCY (NH Brussels Bloom x Harlan Levey Projects), Brussels (BE), photo_graz 014. Biennale der steirischen Fotokunst. Kunstfreiraum Papierfabrik, Graz (AT), Narrenkastl, Frohnleiten (AT), ArtPoint Gallery, Kulturkontakt, Vienna (AT). She contributed for collective projects like “managing structural bird problems” – DIE PHILOSOPHISCHEN BAUERN, Kabinett, Akademie Schloß Solitude, “KILOBASE BUCHAREST A – H” (publisher: Mousse, Milan, 2011) and “KILOBASE BUCHAREST A – Z” (publisher: PUNCH, 2020).

Jasmina Al-Qaisi is a writer for voice and paper. She appears sometimes in other forms: as a walking scientist, the schnelle musikalische Hilfe service, or as the only agent for the Self-Entitled-Self-Entitlement-Office. She often makes waves on various radios and is a member of the sound interested artist group Research and Waves.

Kjersti Vetterstad is a Norwegian visual artist living and working in Oslo (NO). She is educated from the National Academy of Arts in Bergen, Norway and Konstfack University of Arts, Craft and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. Through media spanning from performance and installation to sound, video and film, Vetterstad explores themes such as time, place and impermanence, and questions related to identity and alienation. In recent years her works have revolved around issues of environmental challenges and questions related to the boundaries that define the relations between the human and the more than human world.
Vetterstad is the Norwegian partner, and the cultural mediator in Norway for TRIUMF AMIRIA –Muzeul Culturii Queer [?].
She has recently shown her work at International Filmmaker Festival of New York (US), Jaipur International Film Festival (IN), Kunstnernes Hus Cinema in Oslo (NO), Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol (AU), Black Box Theatre in Oslo (NO), Momentum – Nordic Biennale for Contemporary Art in Moss (NO), Øyafestivalen (NO) and Fjaler Theatre Festival (NO). She has presented solo exhibitions at Knipsu and Entrée in Bergen, and at UKS, Podium and Tidens Krav in Oslo (NO).

Mihai Mihalcea is an artist and choreographer based in Bucharest. He co-founded the group“Marginalii” (The Marginals), which was the first group of independent dancers post-1989 and he initiated and contributed to major projects such as Multi Art Dance Center (MAD), The National Dance Center in Bucharest (CNDB), subRahova space, Căminul Cultural which led to the international recognition of Romanian contemporary dance.His choreographic works made between 1994-2009 under his name have been presented locally and internationally in institutions and festivals such as Tanzquartier Wien (AT), Tanz im August Berlin (DE), Paris Quartier d’Ete (FR), Springdance Utrecht (NL), Bucharest National Theater (RO), La Filature – Scène nationale de Mulhouse (FR), and have been highlighted in press such as Le Monde, Berliner Zeitung, Liberation, Danser, Ballet-Tanz International, Dance Theatre Journal, La Repubblica etc.
Between 2005-2013 he works as Director of the National Dance Center in Bucharest, an institution he co-founded, which became one of the most formative structures for several generations of local artists and choreographers. He was nominated for the “Paris – Europe 2006” prize by Maison d’Europe et d’Orient from Paris for the projects he conducted at CNDB. Between 2016-2019 Farid Fairuz also performed in the works of Manuel Pelmuș and Alexandra Pirici presented in institutions such as Tate Modern, New Museum NY, Art Basel 2019, Kunsthalle Wien, Tanzquartier Wien, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Théâtre de la Ville Paris, HAU Berlin.
In 2010 he assumed a new, fictive artistic identity, namely Farid Fairuz, under which he continued his work until 2019 and made choreographic works and performances, both live and for camera. These have been presented both in the context of visual arts and of contemporary dance in institutions such as Kunsthalle Gent (BE), Black Box Theater Oslo (NO), The Contemporary Art Gallery of Buckenthal Museum Sibiu (RO), Rencontres Choreographiques de Seine-Saint-Denis (FR), HAU Berlin (DE), The Paintbrush Factory Cluj (RO), The National Dance Center, Bucharest (RO), Akademie Der Künste Berlin (DE), Kunsthalle Bega, Timisoara (RO), etc
The entire artistic production he made under Farid Fairuz moniker was recently acquired by MNAC – The Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest (RO).

Raj Alexandru Udrea is an actor, performer, drag queen and trainer. Raj Alexandru performs several theater shows, works on the independent stage of Romanian theater and works with NGOs, often as a mentor or trainer. He has participated in several workshops on topics such as: racism, homophobia, anti-discrimination, the inclusion of minorities in society, dramaturgy, and much more.

Veda Popovici is a political worker, theorist and artist dedicated to anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian and communitarian principles and practices. Her work navigates these fields of action focusing on material possibilities of reclaiming the commons and decolonial, queer and feminist practices.
Her art practice is based on situational interventions, performative, collective and object based productions while exploring the possibilities of political imagination and the body’s ability to influence it.
One of her recent projects, co-created in 2017-2018 together with Mircea Nicolae, is History Does (Not) Repeat Itself, a speculative history of 90s emancipatory people’s struggles in Romania. Her political work has developed in the context of various autonomous, anarchist and feminist initiatives such as the Bezna collective, the Gazette of Political Art, Dysnomia community, Claca center, Macaz cooperative and autonomous collective. After finishing her PhD on nationalism in Romanian art of the 1980s, she has taught classes on decolonial thought, nationalism and feminist theory at the National University of Arts in Bucharest and at the University of California Santa Cruz. Dedicated to radical housing organizing, she has cofounded in 2013 the Common Front for Housing Rights in Bucharest.
Since 2016 she is a co-organizer of actions for the national federation for housing justice The Block for Housing and since 2019 she is the facilitator of the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City. She is based in Bucharest.

Curator

KILOBASE BUCHAREST
The KILOBASE BUCHAREST duo was initiated by Dragoș Olea in 2010 together with Ioana Nemeș (1979 – 2011) as an artistic project that took the form of a nomadic art space. Gradually KILOBASE BUCHAREST became a hybrid between curatorial project and nomadic gallery.Starting with 2016, KILOBASE BUCHAREST is conceptualised by Dragoș Olea and curator Sandra Demetrescu.
KILOBASE BUCHAREST explores three main topics: economy, queer and Bucharest, drawing consistently from the local context. KILOBASE BUCHAREST also investigates the depths, intensities and micropolitics of experimental collaboration practices involving artists.
KILOBASE BUCHAREST curated, exhibited, produced works or exhibitions at KULTURKONTAKT, Vienna (AT), Oberwelt, Stuttgart (DE), Museion, Bolzano (IT), Eastside Projects, Birmingham (UK), Viennafair, Vienna (AT), Brukenthal Museum of Contemporary Art, Sibiu (RO), CCN, Graz (AT), Eastwards Prospectus, Bucharest (RO, SUPERSYMMETRICA Madrid (ES) etc.
Current and upcoming projects include editing experimental alphabet book about Bucharest – KILOBASE BUCHAREST A -Z (publisher PUNCH, 2021) and curating “YOU FEEL ~ AND DRIFT ~ SING. FROM ONE SCENE TO ANOTHER“ exhibition for TRIUMF AMIRIA in partnership with MNAC.