Project initiator: Daniela Catona, Faculty of Arts and Design

SELFISH WORK

Initiated in 2019 within the Faculty of Arts and Design in Timișoara, the PEND project started as an effort to build communication bridges. The name refers to the meaning variants of the English term PEND, which starts from the idea of ​​waiting, but also that of finding an answer. It is desired to create a common interaction space, built on visual goals and concepts. 

Conceived within the wider framework of the PEND project, SELFISH WORK builds on the idea of ​​associating the self-portrait in the selfie variant with a work made during the period of self-isolation.

The play on words in the title of the project, which associates the term selfie with selfish, started from the idea of ​​excessive concentration on one's own person. Both the self-portrait and the work are close to the idea of ​​representativeness, their interaction resulting in an image of an oversized self, but which in artistic circumstances can be considered ideal. In recent months, referring to one's own person has taken on a new connotation, for many of us our own face has become a more important reference element than it was before. At the same time, displaying the works, opening them to the world, also received another consistency in a period when school workshops or exhibition halls became distant spaces.

The project was launched in the form of a call disseminated on social networks and through direct interaction with future participants.

SELFISH WORK brings together the proposals of 51 visual artists and students. The images were presented in the environment of the Facebook social network (https://www.facebook.com/Selfish-Work-140199891202263), and at a later date they will also be disseminated within the Arte-fact page, on the Faculty's website of Arts and Design from Timisoara.

The images speak in a different way about reporting to one's own face seen as a recurring topic during the pandemic. At the same time, in each of the images proposed by the participants, both presences coexist, that of the image of one's own face and that of the visual work made during the pandemic. The degree of display or, on the contrary, of hiding the presence of the portrait gives the consistency and flavor of the whole project, seen as a reflection with visual, but also conceptual valences.

The heterogeneity of the mediums through which the participating artists of the SELFISH project express themselves visually results in a very wide palette of means of expression, from painting to graphics, ready-made objects, ceramics, textiles or installations. Photography as a medium for visual rendering of the face, of the self-portrait, returns in many of the proposals, but not exclusively. At the same time, the heterogeneity of environments surpasses the genres of approach, contributing to a global vision, built on the dissolution of formal limitations.

Temporally and conjuncturally, by adapting to the situation of the pandemic, the project is a testimony of the way in which focusing, concentrating on one's own person and especially on one's face, brings changes that were not anticipated until recently.

The presentation of images made by established visual artists alongside those made by students or young artists builds a broad and diverse composition that juxtaposes mature creation with the freshness and ingenuity of youth.

participants:

Florin Arhire, Eugenia Drăgoi-Banciu, Paul Eugen Banciu, Rodica Banciu, Diana Baltag, Liliana Basarab, Carina Bălan, Andrada Boha, Răzvan Botis, Dana Catona, Angelica Chici, Sergiu Chihaia, Ciprian Chirileanu, Maria Cioată, Ema Cristescu, Ruth Dobîndă . Mateiaș, Nicolae Moldovan, Ludmila Naghi, Oana Opincă, Luisa Palade, Teo Papadopol, Daliana Pavel, Lia Pffeifer, Mărioara Popescu, Ioana Preda, Renée Renard, Silvia Râncu Trion, Ligia Seculici, Andrei Sănătescu, Valentina Ştefănescu, Ioana Terheș, Decebal Tăroi , Alexandra Tecu, Andreea Urda, Laura Ungureanu, Florin Zhu.

Univ. Assoc. Dr. Daniela Catona