FABER_Art in the City

In the past years, Timișoara has become a hub of creation and innovation, with more and more open spaces hosting art exhibitions, book launches, performances and creative workshops. One of these spaces is in Fabric neighbourhood and is a real driving force within the cultural, artistic and social landscape of the city.

FABER – The Capacity Building – is a cultural centre born from the desire to build a space for cooperation, which aims to facilitate the development of the creative and cultural environment in Romania, especially in Banat. At FABER, you will find spaces for events, meetings or concerts, a co-working & makerspace, a bistro called Embassy and nice people with innovative ideas, eager to make the world a better place. With over 250 events organised, the space has acquired an essential role on Timișoara’s artistic stage, so if you want to take a tour of the most remarkable sights of the city, FABER is a must!

Among the most important events hosted at FABER, which you have certainly heard of, are the film festival Ceau, cinema; exhibitions in partnership with the Moving Fireplaces project; the Harababura Vintage Fair; contemporary dance performances coordinated by Unfold Motion and concerts by Robin and the Backstabbers, VAMA, byron. In addition, FABER is a space open to cooperation and everyone can find their place here, as proved by one of the projects that support the community of artists and creative people in Timisoara – creativa. Creativa is an interactive instrument that reveals the cultural and creative potential of the city, providing exhibition areas and resources for individual or collective projects.

It is little wonder that FABER has become one of the Art Encounters partners and hosts some exhibitions of this edition of the biennial. One of the works you will have the opportunity to study is the site-specific installation I re-place the horizontal of the water by the Romanian artist Miklos Onucsan. On a clay surface that imitates water bodies, the artist conceptually replaces water with spirit levels, keeping only one of its elements: horizontality. Despite its static nature, the work is supported by a continuous process that negotiates with your perception, aiming to make you look at reality with different eyes, by temporarily diverting the logic of objects.

In the same paradoxical manner, Onucsan’s work made of laminated stratified timber, Self-portrait by the meter, presents the artist as a ready-made industrial product. The objectification of one’s own appearance and the aggressiveness of wood slicing is an ironic way of self-flagellation. However, as the dimensions of the work vary with the “customer requirements”, the work suggests the artist has entered a new cultural, market-driven medium.

Another artist you will discover at FABER during this year’s Art Encounters Biennial is Magdalena Lazarczyk, with her work entitled The Night of Time. The video installation is a collage, the components of which form a unit. Individual forms are not alienated beings, but appear to be made of the same substance, although they bring different ages to mind. The work reflects a vision out of time, a dimension without the past-future, good-bad or culture-nature dichotomies, where everything happens here and now, “here” meaning everywhere and “now” meaning always. In this manner, the installation cancels any historical reference, placing it in a timeless medium.

Alternatively, The Clouds, a series of works by artist Flaviu Rogojan, is closely intertwined with reality and time. Making references to technology and online culture, the works transpose the clouds from the organic world, from nature, to a computerized, automated environment. The artist also plays with words, which acquire different meanings depending on the context in which we live, the clouds symbolising not only the masses of liquid droplets, but also the “cloud” – the servers on which information is stored.

All the artworks exhibited at FABER are part of the curatorial project proposed by Mihnea Mircan, Landscape in a Convex Mirror, a concept that focuses on our reflections and projections of the inner and outer world. The artworks prompt introspection and question the way you see the world and yourself. 

Come and visit the FABER cultural centre, to take advantage of this great experience and maybe to discover new, surprising meanings.