107/2 (Racoţi. The House)
I feel something, don’ t know what 2021, Art Encounters Foundation Timisoara, curators Diana Marincu, Magdalena Kardasz
“Andreea Medar’ s work often starts with family stories, through which she interprets broader contemporary phenomena. She uses personal themes to call attention to
important problems of smaller and larger communities. The project prepared for the exhibition is a multimedia installation. Its central figure is the artist’s grandmother — the elder of her family, living in an old house in the village of Racoţi. The artist spent her childhood there and now sadly observes its social and physical degradation. The Oltenia region, known for its elaborate wooden architecture and rich folklore heritage, has been depopulating for many years. The young emigrate and the deserted households gradually fall into ruin. Andrea’s grandmother’s house is number 107/2 and was once used as a school, where her grandfather was a teacher. In the exhibition she presents a video screening. A discerning viewer will realise that it is not a film, but the footage from a webcam installed in one of the rooms. The viewer becomes something of a voyeur, peeping into the private world of one of the last guardians of the life in Racoţi. The camera was installed by the family of the elderly woman to maintain constant contact with her and ensure her safety. In this way, the space of the old house was linked with the flat of her relatives in the city. (It should be noted that the grandmother agreed to take part in her granddaughter’s project.) The pandemic has limited social contacts in favour of virtual conversations, and the internet has entered the previously analogue worlds of seniors. This is also a possible theme in the interpretation of Andreea Medar’ s project.
The second important element of the exhibition is a sculptural installation — a model of the described house built of transparent plastic. The interior of the house is filled with soil from Racoţi and local plants growing in the vicinity of the springs. Through a hole in the roof, water drips onto it, and a closed circuit transports it back up. Water is a life-giving but also potentially destructive force. (A hole in the roof of a house foretells its imminent destruction — such is the fate of many houses in depopulated villages).
It is worth mentioning that in order to create her installation, the artist used the technique of hand-sewing — she sewed together sheets of foil with plastic thread, just as the old inhabitants of this village used to sew their clothes by hand. Other elements of the composition are plastic cushions filled with water, on which the artist embroidered fragments of notes found in the old house. This time, her embroidery technique, which refers to folk crafts, clashes with the contemporary material — cheap plastic, which is replacing the old materials.
107/2 (Racoţi. The House) by Andreea Medar is a poetic collage composed of childhood memories, family stories, local ‘found objects and texts’. It is also a story about time and the inevitability of change, about destruction and rebirth in a new, not always more beautiful form.”( Magdalena Kardasz)
107/2 (Racoţi. The House) 2021, Art Encounters, transparent plastic, plexiglas, manual seams, plants, water, clay, live broadcasts