Anticamera – Flag Down The Flag

10th April – 20th April 2018
Opening: 5th April 2018
Art Encounters Foundation, 46C Take Ionescu Blvd. (Casa ISHO), Timișoara

An exhibition project by Gloria Luca and Tudor Pătraşcu (ANTICAMERA). The event coincides with the end of the two artists’ participation in the Art Encounters Foundation’s program, Artist in Residence, 2018.

In Flag Down The Flag, Gloria Luca and Tudor Pătraşcu are particularly operating with the representations of conflict within the European mediatic space of the last five years, which they appropriate, transfer and overlay on various supports in their endeavor to analyze the current layers of history. The two authors are questioning the use of the flag instrumented with destabilizing intentions, examining the influence of the (extremist) populist speech on tolerance towards minorities, as well as the consequences upon these of the political instabilities. Among the key-events for this project is the Syrian refugee crisis, Brexit (that pledged against immigrants) and the ”fake news” phenomenon.

The title of the exhibition highlights the two artists’ position in relation to the nationalist reactions and the extremist manifestations that are increasingly visible both on a local and global level. In subsidiary, in the frame of Great Union Centenary, the ubiquity of the national emblem within the Romanian society is also investigated by reference to events such as the making of the largest flag in the world (2013), the biggest Romanian traditional dance in the world (2017), but also to actions that can trigger social (existential) anxiety. Flag Down The Flag interrogates the legitimacy of the hate speech, displaying in an inter-media setting the ”fascination” for social norms that belong to either a blamable or an imaginary past.

ANTICAMERA is a collaborative duo comprised of Gloria Luca (b. 1988) and Tudor Pătrașcu (b. 1979), active since 2014. They both live and work in Iaşi. Commonly understood as a waiting room at the entrance to a workroom/cabinet of a person in the public service, the Romanian term “anticamera” functions as a metaphor for the premeditation of a series of actions that problematize the flexibility of time and space from a conceptual perspective.