18 October 2021 by Mihai Toth
This issue of ARTSENS focuses on introspection and internal and external awareness developed with means such as measurements, associations and analogies, during an artistic journey taken on a route loaded with historical content, critical views and contemplative attitudes.
The theme of this edition brings us closer or takes us farther from the notion of distance, encouraging us to reflect upon it from different angles and proposing considerations through which space becomes a construct delimited by two or several borders.
In this issue, Miruna Moraru speaks about Landscape in a convex mirror, one of the exhibitions staged for the 2021 Art Encounters Biennial, curated by Mihnea Mircan. Ada Muntean presents Diana Marincu’s curatorial project Invisible Cities/Imaginary Lands, organised by Contrasens Cultural Association in cooperation with Georgia Țidorescu and Glad Carpencu-Pop. The complex interview with Mihnea Mircan, conducted by Ioana Terheș, analyses, among other things, the process by which an exhibition is put together by means of distance. A number of articles like Blind as the Mother Tongue – Gentle Meditation on Distance by Mălina Moncea, or The Face of the City – A Fragmented Landscape by Andreea Neag, contain theoretical and critical opinions. Alice Feraru speaks about social space and principles of coexistence. At the contemporary art lesson, Xenia Tinca deals with performance, and Alexandra Mereuți describes Manuel Pelmuș’s project live ongoing action, developed in cooperation with Mihai Mihalcea and Ion Dumitrescu (sound design) as part of the 2021 Art Encounters Biennial. Dani Gagiu presents Remco Torenbosch’s artistic practice. In the end, I propose a bird’s-eye view of the idea of studio and the space occupied by the artist. The Open Studios Tour, a programme under the 2021 Art Encounters Biennial, in which I am involved through the Baraka artist-run space, encourages local cultural activation and artistic mobilisation.