Artistic interventions in nature have become, in the last year, a new practice for the artistic activity of Liliana (Mercioiu) Popa, university professor. PhD in the Faculty of Arts and Design, majoring in painting.
After the intervention in June, from the garden of the French Cultural Institute, called "Later Space", in which it proposed a certain type of interaction of man with the environment, based on the awareness of the interdependence of man with everything that exists, currently, through the two interventions recent works, "Spectrul celebrăriăi" and "Place for doing nothing", the artist accentuates this problem through new points of view.
"Liliana Mercioiu Popa's first intervention using the most spectacular greenhouse of the Young Naturalists' Resort - the cupola greenhouse - refers to the fundamental role of the plant kingdom in sustaining life. The transformation of solar energy into food and the production of oxygen in the atmosphere are the mechanisms by which the plant creates the framework for the coexistence and interdependence of all living things.
Moments of celebration throughout our existence involve plants (tree branches, wreaths, crowns, herbs, bouquets, various floral arrangements), but most of the time the symbolic meaning of these gestures has been lost. The artist proposes a celebration of nature, with the human being included, as an event in itself, not just a "companion" in the celebration of man's existential journey. Such a celebration could only be a joy to look at, covering the entire solar spectrum - the one perceptible to the human eye - and the overwhelming complexity of the entire living world.
The work "Place to do nothing" is placed at the interference between artistic intervention of the Land art type and functional structure. The hammock intended for individual use is here replaced by a hammock fabric, a surface large enough to support simultaneous use. The collective hammock is a place of relaxation and detachment, a possible shared experience, which makes us aware of the difference between "consuming time/passing through time" and "living time/existing in time". The idea underlying the intervention made by Liliana Mercioiu Popa starts from the individual's relationship with the galloping passage of time, the time that is never enough, despite all the tools we have created to reduce time consumption with certain activities , to become as efficient as possible, to be able to do more". (Maria Orosan Telea)
These works are part of the contemporary art exhibition "Oasis. Green Identity", organized by the Avantpost group in partnership with the University of Agricultural Sciences Timișoara and curated by Maria Orosan-Telea, which brings together artists from Timișoara in collaboration with representatives of the MQ18 Kunstplatz München Platform and the Invisible Flock Leeds Collective. The venue is an alternative one, on Rozelor street no. 4, the Young Naturalist Resort, which belongs to the University of Agricultural Sciences Timișoara.
"The project problematizes the relationship between the human environment and the natural environment, the accelerated urbanization and the deepening of the imbalance between the built-up areas and the green spaces inside the cities. The Oasis Exhibition. Green Identity aims to reflect on these aspects through the presence of artists who work with space, objects and new media technologies, who build coherent discourses in relation to the place and situation in which they are going to insert their conceptual and material structures". (Maria Orosan Telea).
The exhibition opened to the public on Friday 17 September and will be open to the public during artist-public meetings through picnic and art weekends, guided tours, presentations, workshops and artist talks/walks (Friday: 14 – 19, Saturday and Sunday: 10 – 19).
Participating artists: Avanpost Group (Aura Bălănescu, Ciprian Chirileanu, Cosmin Haiaș, Livia Mateiaș, Liliana Mercioiu Popa, Sorin Oncu, Renée Renard, Petrică Ștefan, Bogdan Tomșa, Miki Velciov).
Guest artists: Andreas Bohnenstengel, Massimo Fiorito, Patricia Lincke / Platform MQ18 Kunstplatz München (co-curator Narcisa Fluturel) and the Invisible Flock Collective Leeds (co-curator Catherine Baxendale).
Univ. Assoc. Dr. Liliana Mercioiu Popa
