I have written a lot about Art Safari, which is an art event, consisting of several exhibitions of visual art, painting, and sculpture, which is regularly organized in Bucharest, Romania.
I have the good fortune (which sometimes turns into misfortune) to live in this city, the capital of Romania.
Advantages and disadvantages. That's how it is everywhere in the world. There is not only perfect and good. There is not only bad and ugly. They mix and each of us chooses what he or she can. I am happy to have a choice!
The advantage I'm referring to now relates to culture. In the big cities, there are most cultural institutions. Museums, theatres, opera..., if you happen to be passionate about some form of art then you can find what you like.
Museums are a wonderful thing. You can enjoy works of art and you can learn. There are many museums in Bucharest but I didn't manage to visit them all. I didn't have time. Now, after retirement, I have time and I want to spend most of it visiting museums.
Art Safari has been organized for ten years in Bucharest. I haven't visited this bunch of museums gathered in one until now. For several reasons... I found it too expensive, I didn't have time and because I didn't know it could be so interesting.
This year's Art Safari was dedicated to love. Most of the exhibitions had this theme of love and that's why this edition was called Art Safari-Love Edition.
Tomorrow is the last day to visit.
I have made some posts about this part dedicated to love. If you are curious, here are the previous posts:
Art Safari
Art Safari - Love Edition
Art Safari-Love Edition, or, Love's A Malady Without Cure
Art Safari - Love Edition - Finally Came The Kiss
I thought I had exhausted the subject but found that there was still something left to say and show. So there will be two more posts, and in the first one, this one, I will write about a very, very small drawing exhibition. It fits in a room that is as small as my kitchen at home!
A + B and Sometimes C
This is the name of the exhibition made by the Romanian artist Ana Banica within Love Stories at Art Safari.
There are only two characters in the drawings, rarely three. Two lovers.
At his question: "Do you still love me?" she replies at length, with the answer running from the wall to the floor of the room and the exhibition: "I love you divinely, I love you clearly, I love you anyway, I love you erotically..."
The exhibition consists of 868 drawings made with markers on sheets of paper.
These drawings, made ten years ago and never shown to the public before, depict the love relationship between two characters, him and her.
The drawings look awkward as if they were made by children. It's these characters that have been reduced to their essence, a huge series of drawings that capture hundreds of different aspects of love, and more, between a man and a woman.
Each interaction between him and her (A and B) brings hundreds of facets of love, to the relationship between the two lovers. Valid for all people, we can all recognize ourselves in the dialogue or the poses in the drawings.
All these 868 drawings are pasted on one of the walls of the room. On the narrowest wall. It's almost impossible to see all the drawings... and I think that was the author's intention. So that we can't see all the drawings but imagine our own discussions in the couple, in the family.
None of the visitors were able to see every drawing. You would have had to stand far too long in front of the wall in that small room. It would have meant stopping access for other visitors. I took as many photos as I could to see the drawings afterward.
These drawings are part of a series of 1400 drawings made by Ana Banica in 2015 when she isolated herself in her apartment for three months. Surely everything she conveys with this series of drawings has an autobiographical character, is part of her life experience, and expresses good and bad things that happened to her.
This start in the artist's work came after three years in which she retired from her artistic work. I don't know why, probably unpleasant things happened...
After so many years of not drawing, this thirst for work was triggered. Drawings were done definitively, in the sense that there were no retouches or corrections. Everything was done from the first time.
In fact, these drawings marked the artist's return to her vocation as an art maker.
This small exhibition was a different drop in the whole conglomerate called Art Safari - Love Edition. It could have been ignored, I think many of the exhibition visitors didn't even notice this small room. I'm glad I didn't miss it. I found the beauty in it and there was that something a little different, unexpected in this great exhibition dedicated to love.
It's only now, in the end, looking at this last photo, that I understand why this small exhibition was crammed into such a small room. It is obvious that the artist's wish was that viewing these drawings of A and B and sometimes C would be done only by A and B and only sometimes C!
