Zachęta Project Room

curator: Julia Harasimowicz

Larisa Crunțeanu’s project is connected with an accidental finding in the centre of Bucharest. Together with the artist Sonia Hornung, they encountered an object that was difficult to identify — a silent, stone-shaped loudspeaker standing on a lawn. The paradoxical finding provokes many questions, not only about what the object is and what it is for, but also about what it sounds like and what its voice says. Is it one of the voices of a larger group? Where is the boundary between its reality and being artificial?

Crunțeanu focuses on the object itself. She asks questions about the strange finding which, as she well knows, will remain unanswered. The artist composes the Aria Mineralia exhibition in the shape of a map of thoughts, composed of personal associations, common symbols and cultural references. She refers primarily to the notion of mimicry and social consciousness — a joint collection of ideas, opinions and beliefs.

Crunțeanu, instead of moralising the content, proposes a humorous and diverse approach to important social and philosophical issues. The author breaks down her dilemma of (re)cognition into factors and, although she knows that she will not be able to fully understand the phenomenon of the found object, she may try to understand her own environment through it.

Larisa Crunțeanu (b. 1986) — studied photography and moving image and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at National University of Arts in Bucharest. She works at the intersection of video and performance between research and speculation, often collaboratively, creating contexts for the emergence of new practices and organisation. Between 2012–2016, she ran the Bucharest project space Atelier 35 with Xandra Popescu. She lives and works in Bucharest and Warsaw.

The exhibition is part of the cultural project F vs F, produced by Copia Originala Association and co-funded by the National Cultural Administration Fund (AFCN), Romania

 ^{Larisa Crunteanu, Untitled, 2018, film still, courtesy of the artist}