What Resides In A Resident Artist
Alina Georgiana Teodorescu, Lisbon, Portugal & Slanic Moldova, RomaniaIf you meet Alina Teodorescu in person, it is very likely that you will be left speechless at her sheer beauty, style, and panache from the very word go. That said, you will likely also discover that she is a person with certain leadership qualities that are possibly of high value to the realm of independent art practices today.
Alina is a Lisbon-based visual artist, and the Founder of In Context Slanic Moldova, Romania, an artist residency, which has been functioning since 2017. The title In Context is a translation of the Hindi word Sandarbh, and it is after the Sandarbh Artist Residency in Partapur, India, that Alina has named her own residency as well.
Despite not having visited Partapur until 2023, Alina had been following Sandarbh from afar, and having been deeply inspired by it, she decided to map Sandarbh onto her own homeland.
’’The beginning of 2023 started for me with the most meaningful project I have been part of for the last 10 years or perhaps in my entire professional life.
Born in Partapur, Rajasthan, 20 years ago, Sandarbh is a contemporary art residency program that I came across in 2016 in Mumbai. And, without even visiting it, it has radically changed my way of existing in the world, facilitating a transition from a self centred, voracious mindset to a nature and people empathy driven subsistence, giving me the means to manifest it when the need to do so was becoming acute.
In Context, the project that took over my life in 2017 is in fact Sandarbh.
And now, by participating in the Sandarbh residency myself, I had the chance to have it merge, as per the multitude of similarities that were created just by knowing it from far.’’
– from Alina’s personal notes
In Context Slanic Moldova website
My meeting, and collaboration with her was sheer happenchance. In Jan 2023, I received a call from my old friend, renowned artist, and the founder of Sandarbh, Chintan Upadhyay. He inquired if I could help Alina in putting up a music festival for Sandarbh’s 20th anniversary in Partapur. Chintan had thought of me, as I had organized similar events for Sandarbh in 2004 and 2007, and therefore I somewhat knew about the local musicians in the region.
When I spoke soon afterwards, to Alina over the phone, I was quite amused by one particular idea of hers – “a residency within a residency”. It was an idea that she wanted to use as the basis of her performance at Sandarbh. Alina who was an invited resident artist at Sandarbh, wanted to further invite local musicians as resident artists under the banner of In Context Slanic Moldova, Romania; and thereby Sandarbh & In Context Slanic Moldova, Romania would come together as one, in a music and arts festival.
I jumped at the opportunity to participate in “a residency within a residency” not merely because of Alina’s amazing charm, but also because the notion of a resident artist inviting another artist on their own volition, and as a part of the performance, seemed a pioneering one.
“My work as a resident artist was to be a performance: a residency within a residency, In Context, In Sandarbh. It was all supposed to be a mocking process, to bring back humour in the arts, in relation to this residency edition’s topic: “what do artists need, to create art?”.
– from Alina’s personal notes
While we worked to put together a festival, and as we engaged in further dialogue, I remember one specific conversation that later came to become a fundamental baseline for further exchanges.
As we talked while location scouting, at first I felt that even as an active collaborator, I was somehow unable to get my ideas across to her clearly; and in that context, I had said to her in passing, that we need to trust the process and let the festival grow organically; as is the case with most things in India, and that, trust is literally the currency upon which our communities operate.
To that, she replied that her experience is rather different due to her cultural background as a Romanian. With its communist history and the tyranny of the state of nearly half a century, Romanians often felt a sense of permanent emergency; and as they navigated their ways through the specter of constant state surveillance, it was difficult for Romanians to trust anybody or anything easily. As a result, there was often an environment of constant one-upmanship in society. Needless to say therefore, that most Romanians are highly independent in their actions, highly resilient, and habitually focused on individual effort, rather than process.
I was left thinking about how a system of government could indeed be the reason for the collective pathology of a nation, that lived for decades under severe economic conditions of the communist era. A few days later, I watched a documentary on the Al Jazeera World website, wherein a young Romanian journalist Elena Vijuli, who works for a leading Romanian news agency the România Liberă, uncovers the continuing legacy of Nicolae Ceausescu’s tyranny that still casts an enduring influence over people’s lives today.
Even though the legacy persists, the 1989 revolution and the ensuing atmosphere of a new democracy has, in my mind, added new perspectives, and somewhat created a new cultural ethos amongst Romanians – from an untrusting oppressive regime, to independent entrepreneurship and business.
As we worked towards an outcome I could see in Alina, a firm diligence and focused individual effort, perhaps it is an obvious Romanian trait, that she diligently put into bringing her idea of the music festival into a real, physical, and tangible outcome.
We had just four days to work up a festival, and I am glad to report that we were able to implement some of what she may have envisioned, as we organized a two day concert series in three different locations, and featured a number of local musicians despite the given time constraints.
Here are a few promo videos of the festival issued by Sandarbh:
A special mention must be made here of Yatin Upadhyay, co-founder of Sandarbh, permanent volunteer, and organizer par excellence. Putting up a festival in four days is hardly a walk in the park. It would have been impossible without Yatin, who is not just an artist himself, but a school Principal, a social worker, and a long time benefactor of many communities in and around Partapur. Alina would agree that neither she nor I, can hold a candle to the efficient way in which Yatin facilities resident artists.
Full article
Himanshu Desai
Key words: art residency
independent art practices
In Context
Sandarbh
performance
cultural ethos
community
IMPACT IN CONTEXT: LESSONS IN ENGAGEMENT FROM A ROMANIAN MOUNTAIN TOP
Alexandra Chiriac is a third year PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews, funded through the SGSAH AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership. She is researching the impact of modernism on stage design and interior design in Romania in the 1920s and 30s. She holds an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art and has previously worked for Sotheby’s and for GRAD, a non-profit cultural platform for Russian and Eastern European arts. You can find out more about her work at www.alexandrachiriac.co.uk and follow her on Twitter @arthistorynomad.Listening to a philosophy scholar from India speaking to a group of 18-year olds on the top of a Romanian mountain is probably not a very common occurrence, but that is not the reason I felt compelled to pull out a pencil and paper and take copious notes one recent June morning. As PhD students, we frequently have impressed upon us the importance of impact and engagement, yet no amount of training in these esoteric areas can replace witnessing good practice in action.
But first, some words on how I came to be part of this fascinating encounter. At the invitation of an artist friend, I swapped my usual desk at the university library for ten days in the Romanian spa town of Slănic Moldova, hoping for some write-up inspiration. It was my second visit to this peaceful mountain spot where my talented friend Alina Teodorescu has been organising artistic residencies that actively engage with the local community. The In Context project (www.incontext.art/en) is an annual collaboration with artists from different countries which results not only in an exhibition, but also in many activities that can truly be described as impactful in conditions that are perhaps challenging. Not only are the cultural and language barriers to be considered, but also the practices of contemporary art which can be impenetrable to many of us, and even more so to a community not frequently exposed to them.
As a researcher, I frequently wonder how I can make my work more accessible and this was an eye-opening experience. In these Romanian woodlands, I was out of the library not only physically but also mentally and witnessed the daily interactions of the residency participants with the local community. This year, the group consisted of Indian artists and thinkers active in several disciplines, including sound & music, choreography, philosophy, literature and the fine arts, as well as two Romanian artists. Teodorescu, who is from Slanic Moldova, engineered multiple opportunities for engagement, such as art and movement workshops for different age groups, an oral history project, recordings of the local soundscape, and encounters between artists and local craftspeople.
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In Context is a residency programme in Slănic Moldova, Romania, that aims to inspire contemporary artists to develop their practice and create work in non-studio and non-gallery spaces, through engaging with new geographies, audiences and socio-economic contexts. For more information see incontext.art, @artinslanic on Facebook and @incontext_slanicmoldova on Instagram.Full article
Alexandra Chiriac
Key words: philosophy
impact
engagement
art residency
independent art practices
In Context
Sandarbh
performance
cultural ethos
community