Raluca Popa

Works

Raluca Popa

“I think of my work as a collection of sentences and short stories.

I often work with existing material. I like to think about a referent such as an image, a written text, a moving picture or personal archive as possessing an implicit documentary quality, bearing a truth beyond its subjective appearance and motivation. Sometimes this primal aspect is far from reach, if I work for example with the title of a book, or an archive of personal school test papers. I work toward acknowledging this aspect, toward clarification. Then, I proceed at reassembling the material in expressive forms to be sent anew into the public sphere. Through various mediums I compare, I turn around, I lurk around, I discard the unnecessary, I make cuts and folds, I reveal, I confess. I complete a cycle. I try to address existing material with care, with precision, in line with ideas of preservation, reparation, recognition, rehabilitation.

As much as I am interested in recognizing and preserving forms, I have been preoccupied more recently with defining for myself what it has to be done, what it is acceptable or not to do, and whether one has to favor models and similarities, or instead one must exercise a certain freedom, one must remain an obstinate foreigner. Therefore, I am once again coming back to early manifestations, to acts of learning and repetition, to forms of replication and comparison, and in emulating simple gestures – for example, the act of learning to swim, as a performance at the Black Sea – I am ultimately bringing into play a feeling of inevitability, a sense of urgency.”

CV

Born in 1979 (RO), lives and works in Berlin (DE)

STUDIES

2011

MA Fine Art, Byam Shaw, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (UK)

2003

BA Fine Art, University of Art and Design, Cluj (RO)

2002

Erasmus, University of Castilla–la Mancha, Cuenca (ES)

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Solo shows

2023

‘Source’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

2019

‘How to Disappear’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

2016

‘Iarna pe uliţă’, Sandwich Gallery, Bucharest (RO)

‘The Unknown Portrait of Brancusi’, Europe House, London (UK)

2015

‘Two Titles’, Rumänska Kulturinstitutet, Stockholm (SE)

‘Turning Something Plain into a Circle’, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest (RO)

See more

Group shows

2023

‘The Signs for Somewhere and Elsewhere and Here and Now’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

‘Reclaiming Sociality around Land and the Rural’, Jogja Biennale 17, Yogyakarta (ID)

2022

Sinopale 8, International Sinop Biennial (TU)

’22 Women Artists’, Stations, Berlin (DE)

2021

‘The Domino Effect 2’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

‘Goodbye, Sarotti’, Soft Power Project Space, Berlin (DE)

‘Cadence: Video Poetry Festival 2021’ (with Simona Nastac), Northwest Film Forum, Seattle (US)

2020

‘The Domino Effect’, Gaep, Bucharest (RO)

‘2012 Alphabet Book / Abecedar 2012’, The Last Archive by Vlad Basalici & Tranzit Bucharest (RO)

‘Viral Self-Portraits’ (online exhibition), MG+MSUM, Ljubljana (SI)

2019

‘Polyphonic’, StAnza Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, St. Andrews (UK)

‘Artistic Enquiries into Plants’, Tranzit, Bucharest (RO)

‘Glossary of Distant Narratives’ (in partnership with TIFF #18), Pilot – Fabrica de Pensule/The Paintbrush Factory, Cluj (RO)

2018

‘Truth Lies Not Only in a Dream, But in Many Dreams’, Gaep (formerly EASTWARDS PROSPECTUS), Bucharest (RO)

2017

‘Life A Userʼs Manual’: Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara (RO)

Sinopale 6, International Sinop Biennial (TU)

‘The Best of Bees’, Duplex, Geneva (CH)

2016

‘Arrangement for a Prize’, installation for ‘The Most Beautiful Books from Romania’ exhibition, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (RO)

‘South by Southeast. A Further Surface’, Guangdong Times Museum (CN)

‘Esthetics of Learning’, Printmaking Gallery, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia (USA)

2015

‘Mapping Bucharest: Art, Memory, and Revolution 1916–2016’, Vienna Biennale (AT)

‘Une autre cité’, Tranzit, Bucharest (RO)

2014

‘Dispositions in Time and Space’, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (RO)

‘And Yet There Was Art!’, Leopold Museum, Vienna (AT)

2012

‘What We Destroy and Celebrate at the Same Time’, Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest (RO)

‘O Que Acontece Depois’, Centro Cultural, Cartaxo (PT)

2010

‘As You Desire Me’, Contemporary Art Gallery of Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu (RO)

‘13 Places’, Concourse Gallery, Archway, London (UK)

OTHER PROJECTS

Visual concept and animation for Polyphonic (2018), live poetry show produced by the National Museum of Romanian Literature, Bucharest (RO)

Visual development for animation:

The Magic Mountain (2015), dir. Anca Damian, animated documentary feature-length

Crulic, The Path to Beyond (2011), dir. Anca Damian, animated drama feature-length

RESIDENCIES AND AWARDS

2020

‘Historia – Hysteria‘, online residency, The Paintbrush Factory & The History Museum, Cluj (RO)

2018

September – artist in residence, quartier21 / MuseumsQuartier, Vienna (AT)

2017

January-June – artist in residence, Embassy of Foreign Artists, Geneva (CH)

2016

July – artist in residence, Residency.ch, PROGR, Bern (CH)

January-April – artist in residence, Villa Straeuli, Winterthur (CH)

2011

Nova Award Commendation, The Lowe+Partners Award for Fresh Creative Talent, Lethaby Gallery, London

Roger & Sarah Bancroft Clark Charitable Trust Award

2010

A Curriculum, A Foundation Artist Residency, Liverpool – short-listed

Press

“More than 10 years after I left London, I have new needs and I'm trying to figure out how much of Sebald’s method I can use or am allowed to use, what is there that interests me. Obviously, I'm interested in the alternation between a dreamed reality and a real dream, this transfer from document to fiction and vice versa. Fiction borrows from the precision of reality and becomes reality in turn. (…) When I work with existing material, for example my test papers or my father's school drawings, I want to keep this material as it is, I don't want to force it into any fiction, but into a form that still contains the marks the original material. Here, in this method of working, I feel I can begin to think about Sebald.”
“The binoculars, the pantograph, the lenses create and maintain a distance from the observed object, and yet the viewer is part of this observing mechanism. But the distance here is not only a physical distance; conceptually, it can also be understood as unknowing, distance in time, lack of clarity or of understanding, confusion, disappearance, rediscovery, as well as protected or restricted area. I’m interested in these marginal, additional semantics.”
In her practice, which often involves working with pre-existing material, Popa does not like to handle anything which is very obvious. As for Works (Scale 1:2), she is on the guard against sticking a message to an image of the past which, even for her, is in an ongoing developing process. “The work somehow remains open for me as well, because I intend to use this material again. It is important in my work to give myself these possibilities, to test different methodologies and meanings, in a non-authoritative way, and if the public reads the work in different ways, it means that I managed to take the material out of its conventional context, that I set something in motion.”
”Works (Scale 1:2) se bazează pe o arhivă de 197 lucrări de control personale, pe care am început să le colecționez în 1992, pe când eram în clasa a VI-a. În 2013 am publicat în Revista Idea, trei facsimile ale unor lucrări de control la cultură civică, despre proprietate, salariu, grevă. Mi-am dat seama atunci că mi-ar plăcea să lucrez mai mult cu acest material foarte neobișnuit, dar nu știam cum ar trebui să-l abordez. Peste ani am încercat tot felul de soluții destul de nesatisfăcătoare. (…) Works (Scale 1:2) este cea mai recentă explorare a materialului de arhivă și cea mai complexă. Aici am vrut să găsesc o modalitate de a transcende conținutul arhivei și de a testa totodată o formă nouă de desen. Intenționat, am folosit doar un simplu creion grafit și un instrument numit pantograf pentru a copia la scara 1:2 toate lucrările de control din arhivă. Corecțiile și calificativele sunt astfel încorporate în blocul de text monocrom, făcând imposibilă discernerea între ceea ce se presupune a fi textul scris de mine și ceea ce este considerat greșit, și eventual corectat si notat. Am menționat cu altă ocazie că sunt interesată să aduc procesele de învățare în practica mea artistică, iar lucrarea prezentă este o redare a intenției mele.”

Exhibitions

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