with Amy Casilda Bartoli, Dominik Buda, Cătălina Cosma, Vlad Dinu, Flora Franke, Elena Kristofor, Denise Lobont, Patric Pavel, Diana Păun und Nora Severio
Exhibition Space of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria
2021
The most exciting thing we do these days – apart from the necessities of self-sufficiency – is going for a walk. The more adventurous among us venture into the forest. Right now, the forest is revealing itself to us as a new space. A space of freedom.
I didn’t get to know the forest until I was 16, when I came to Austria. The forest is a space I can’t quite place. It’s endless, like the steppe where I grew up. Yet it obscures the view. It has a spatiality in which there is no middle ground. I’m not even sure if there’s a foreground there. There is only the forest. It is a body through which I can pass. In which I can move. I find myself in a substance. In a matter. In the forest.
In the forest, I share the air with the trees. I share my breath with them. The breath divides into inhaling and exhaling. And a pause, a stillness in between. Inhaling from the tree. Exhaling into the tree. The tree exhales into me. I inhale out of the tree. I exhale through the tree. The tree inhales through me. This is possibly the most intimate relationship one can have.
In the forest, I dissolve into the surroundings.
In the “Project in the Forest,” I incorporate elements of the existing environment into my installations: I integrate branches and trees and combine them with materials I’ve brought into the forest, such as wooden slats or paint. For the first time, most of my installations actually remained in the forest, and if they haven’t yet been destroyed by the elements, they’re still standing there. They will now be discovered by chance by hikers. To see them for yourself, you are forced into the role of a hiker. You have to go out.
At the same time, I have also brought some of the forest elements – what I call “forest objects” – back from the forest. They are used in an installation within the exhibition space.
