GROUP EXHIBITION

The exhibition brings to light historical finds of almost completely unknown underground queer artistic heritage from the communist era in Romania. These finds consists in the visual diary material left by Petre Sirin (1926-2003) filmmaker, writer, historian and diarist, that document, through both imagistic and textual collage, his queer experiences from roughly the ‘50s to early ‘80s, in the shadow of the oppressive political regime. The exhibition is organized with the support of the national lgbt+ queer rights organization ACCEPT and several partners. It showcases samples of Petre Sirin’s visual diary in dialogue with commissioned works by a selection of contemporary queer artists connected to Romania. This will be the first time Sirin’s work is shown in the context of a contemporary art gallery exhibition, becoming one of the recent attempts to showcase Romanian openly queer art made before the fall of communism.

Curated by Robert Băjenaru, this exhibition brings together new commissioned works by Alex Bodea, Elijah Burgher, Luca Istodor, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Gavril Pop, Miron Schmückle, Daniela Groza and Ioana Pop, Madălina Zaharia (in duo with Kumar Muniandy).