Ioana Macovei

 

Artist Statement 

 

 

I see, I dream, I draw. Oftentimes the lines are blurred.

 

 

I find myself in the position of a pensive spectator, who, out of curiosity, excitement, fear or maybe boredom, intervenes in the occurring everyday scenarios and alters these shadows of the surrounding reality.

Suddenly, the play becomes an intimate image painted in symbolic laud colours, some borrowed from dreams. New images and scenarios are born. They invade the objective reality and intertwine with thoughts.

This game continues day and night until it is no longer a game, it becomes a reality. And this new reality, profoundly interiorised and absurd erodes to the surface and metamorphoses in wordless statements.

 

I hide in the protective shadows of my childhood memories as I observe and comment upon the now.

 

I was born in post-communist Romania, in 1995, and until recently I didn't really know what that meant. I was born on the edge of extremes: between a faulted tradition and the thirst for revival, between profane and mystic, between the old and new, between communism and capitalism. I was born in an era echoing revolutionary ideals never to be materialised.

 

The education I received in Romania perpetuates lost communist patterns. I grew up amongst the shadows of communism and that ultimately influenced my practice- I am naturally, unconsciously drawn towards figurative images and traditional materials.

In Bucharest, for many years, I was an apprentice of a master painter. The very reason for leaving was the striving to surpass the limitations of being a painter (forever striving to perfect this craft). 

 

Leaving my home country allowed me to explore different mediums and reflect upon my own practice. I am a maker, a craftsman reflecting again and again upon the emerging moulded reality.  I love the organic feeling of clay, the harshness of metal, the delicatesse of a line across the wax ground. Arguably, my works can be approached as fabricated cultural artefacts.  

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All in all, those explanations are of secondary importance,

 

There is only one thing must be understood about me, what I make I live and what I live I make