Negotiated Identities/Saints and Tears

May 1 – May 22, 2015

American Artists:
Stephanie Baugh, Gary Chapman, Karen Graffeo, Anne Murray

Romanian Artists:
Anca Chitoran, Diana Dragen-Chirila, Karoly Feleki, Dorel Gaina, Eugen Moritz, Alexandru Radelescu

Years after Romania’s release from communist rule, it continued to suffer from economic instability and political turmoil.  Although the Romanians were members of the European Union, they could not travel to the United States without a visa.  For these Romanian artists, being able to show their art in the U.S. is like a cultural visa, allowing their voices to be heard in a country with whom they long to have a relationship.

Space One Eleven hosts an art exchange between artists living in the American Deep South and artists living in Romania. Collaborations using visual artifacts from both cultures address the importance of historical memory for building the personal self. The visual iconography of the political self-versus the need for autonomy and the dignity of privacy is the exhibition’s primary thematic concept.

Negotiated Identities/Saints and Tears examines how identities in Romania were negotiated before, during, and after communism. The exhibition also explores similar identity issues negotiated by authoritarianism and trends in the religion and politics of contemporary American society.

Nicolae Ceausescu loved nothing better than a monument to himself. But his ministerial palaces and avenues paled next to another of his schemes for building socialism: a plan to increase Romania’s population from 23 million to 30 million by the year 2000. He began his campaign in 1966 with a decree that virtually made pregnancy a state policy. “The fetus is the property of the entire society,” Ceausescu proclaimed. “Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity.”