Romania's Commissioner for the Venice Art Biennale, Attila Kim, on Tuesday, said that the participation in the 59th edition of the International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia - with the project "You are another Me: A cathedral of the body," signed by Adina Pintilie, represents an "extremely important" event for the Romanian cultural diplomacy.
"It is an extremely important event for Romania's cultural diplomacy abroad, probably the most visited exhibition of Romanian art or architecture both domestically and internationally. Only if we look at the data from 2019, when the previous edition of the Venice Art Biennale took place we can see that there were 595,000 visitors, with another 292,000 visitors recorded at the Architecture Biennale, which was postponed from 2020 to 2021. We would like to see that kind of interest in the exhibition that we have at home too, but, after all, this is our chance to show the Romanian art and architecture to the world, considering also the success that we had abroad in the past couple of years," Attila Kim said at the headquarters of the Romanian Cultural Institute, at the press conference where Romania's participation in the Venice Biennale was announced.
Atilla Kim also announced that two other Romanian artists - Alexandra Pirici, who in 2013 represented Romania together with Manuel Pelmus at the Venice Biennale, and Andra Ursuta, a sculptor living in New York - will take Romania to the Venice Art Biennale, participating in the central exhibition. At the same time, another Romanian artist will be present at the Biennale, within the Eriac Pavilion, to promote Roma art and culture on a European level, namely Eugen Raportoru, Agerpres.ro informs.
The Romanian Commissioner for the Venice Art Biennale informed that the budget for this year's participation of Romania in the event is one million lei.
In his turn, the president of the Romanian Cultural Institute, Liviu Sebastian Jicman, stated that Romania's participation in the Biennial is a priority of ICR this year and in the future.
"It's part of our strategy, which we have been presenting in the past couple of days, and I assure you that we will remain a stable and important partner in this project," said Jicman, who brought to mind that this year's project and those shown in the previous years will be presented in a dialogue between the Romanian Pavilion in Geardini and the ICR Gallery at the ICR headquarters in Venice.
Secretary of State with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Andrei Novac said that "Romania has an extraordinary chance this year."
"We come on a very good background from my point of view and I have noticed this internationally every time I have come in contact with the international art market. Romanian artists are currently in a favourable season. We have a lot of important artists and we also noticed this at the Paris Art Fair in the autumn where, without any modesty, even if they were not in the central part of the exhibition space, they had very important works," Novac underscored.
He announced that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will make efforts for the restoration of the Romanian Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale, while all the repair works in the latest years were done by the participants in the Biennial of Arts or Architecture.
"All the spaces are about to be finished. We are waiting for the judging to end, we will have discussions in the coming weeks and we hope that everything will be ready when the exhibition opens. It is a long process and, not that I want to justify somehow what happened in the previous years, by the Ministry is managing a lot of spaces abroad and we need to find solutions for all. There is, for instance, the Accademia de Romania in Rome, which is one of our biggest spaces abroad and which also needs repair works done," added Novac.
A message from the Secretary of State with the Ministry of Culture Liviu Bratescu was relayed by Liviu Sebastian Jicman.
Adina Pintilie stated that the project "You are Another Me: A Cathedral of the Body" is a continuation of a process that started with the making of her debut feature film "Touch Me Not," together with an international team of artists and curators.
"I'm in a very unusual position here. This research started ten years ago, in this area of intimacy and corporality and, in fact, in the area of forgetting what you've learned and re-learning in terms of how we relate to our body, to intimacy, to the visual, how we communicate in terms of audiovisual language these topics that are so important in our lives, but so sensitive and difficult to communicate. This research that took me so many years to complete it's not out there, in the world, in the first stage, in the world of film. And I realize that we are actually now here we the same team plus a couple of new international collaborators. It's a combination of a team coming from the world of film, which comes from the world of visual arts. (...) What we create, we create together. You can't create this thing that we produce now without a team," said the artist.
Members of the jury, representatives of the three organizing institutions were also present.
The Ministry of Culture, which organizes together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Romanian Cultural Institute the competition dedicated to Romania's participation in the Venice Biennale, announced in January that the project selected to represent Romania at the 2022 edition of the event is "You are Another Me: A Cathedral of the body," by Adina Pintilie, curators Cosmin Costinas and Viktor Neumann.
The 2022 edition of the Biennale will take place from April 23 to November 27, 2022, with a pre-session for specialists and the press from April 20 to 22, 2022, the theme of the 59th edition, launched by curator Cecilia Alemani, being "The Milk of Dreams"/ "Il latte dei sogni"/ "Laptele viselor."
Film director and screenwriter, Adina Pintilie, born on January 12, 1980, graduated from the National University of Theatre and Cinematography in Bucharest, Film Directing, in 2008. "Touch Me Not," Adina Pintilie's debut feature film, won, in 2008, the Golden Bear trophy at the 68th Berlin Film Festival, and was nominated for the Best Debut Feature Film.
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