Staycation, 2021-2022
In the summer of 2021, ten emerging German and Romanian female artists met for the inaugural edition of Staycation, a transnational symposium set against various urban and natural spaces in Bucharest, July 16 – 23.
Created as a collaboration between the CTG Collective and artist-run Bucharest-based, Sandwich Association, Staycation is a story about human and artistic connections where artistic collaboration is predetermined by the human habit of getting together.
Addressing concepts like the current state of control on movement and travel, the inevitably human and ecological consequences of the current pandemic, and motherhood within the art world context, the week-long stay in Bucharest served as a cultural exchange and offered the group ample time to explore ideas touching on the personal and the universal.
(Lexia Hachtmann, Catinca Malaimare, Ana Pascu, Lera Kelemen, Yen Chun Lin, Ioana Stanca, Catinca Tabacaru, Daniela Palimariu, Ana-Maria Stefan, Beth Hughes, Isabella Fürnkäs, Barbara Lüdde)
The team
Bucharest-born curator and cultural practitioner Catinca Tabacaru recently moved her gallery from New York City to Bucharest. She is a co-founder of the CTG Collective and has played an equal role with Monosov in the Collective’s projects.
Berlin-based artist and curator Rachel Monosov is a co-founder of the CTG Collective, playing a central role in the conception, planning, and managing of the Collective’s projects, including CTG-R, an traveling international art residency program.
Through its co-founder, Daniela Palimariu, Bucharest-based Sandwich Association has developed itself into one of the most exciting and courageous artist-run spaces in the city.
Artist presentations
During the first two days of the symposium, we (Barbara Lüdde, Lera Kelemen, Catinca Malaimare, Yen Chun Lin, Isabella Fürnkäs, Beth Hughes, Lexia Hachtmann, Ioana Stanca, Ana Pascu and Ana-Maria Stefan) opened up our practices to each other and to the local art community housed within the Malmaison Ateliers. From drawing, image-making, painting, the laborious techniques of embroidery to the multitudes of using the self and the body in performance, surfaces and installations, sound art, each artist talked about the research themes that premeditated the work, their studios and the challenges of artistic labour in the current society.
Staycation Dialogues
How did we arrive to NOW?
The Staycation dialogues moved aside the abstract nature of the artist’s situation during the Covid-19, the restrictions of which definitely pushed the artist’s working conditions faster into a crisis mode, and instead, we elaborated in group-led discussions on the meaningful cultural and social experiences rooted in the physical, with the artists’ awareness and personal narrative highlighted in the exchange.
Motherhood
Hosted by The Legacy, a hub for ethical entrepreneurship in Bucharest, we came together to share those deeper identities we develop throughout the relationship between art and life, such as motherhood, the maternal avenue that can connect us, all the while stigmatising our image within an artworld context that valued us before.
Sharing meals
On July 18th, the historical farmers’ and artisans’ market, Piata Obor, was our meeting point to gather cooking ingredients and to focus on the effort towards locality and the choice of produce brought to the market over imported food. Our aim was to prepare a collective meal as we reflected on the roles – and the power- we assume when we come in contact with the relationship between food and its place within the domestic context, from the first served at the dinner table to the much larger themes of local produce and the diaspora, the healing remedies which feel like valued currencies or the shared experiences which construct our universal parallels.
Collaborative cooking
The process of preparing a collaborative lunch, exploring either Romanian gastronomy or traditional recipes from our own cultures, as well as the act of arranging and decorating a table, resulted in an universal experience had by women around the world everywhere. While it is difficult to put into words why this unity is so important, the feeling one gets when they become part of something truly universal is implicitly important to the movement of society forward.
Symptomatic to the changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, we were experiencing similar situations around the world, regardless of creed, financial status or political context. There is a knowledge we can sense that this shared experience has moved us closer towards unity and that it will help move us into a different way of collaborative living. We are already feeling the first strokes of this change with the commitment of 140 countries to an international corporate tax and to the rise of Green parties focused on ecology across many nations.
