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G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – Museum Statement The ongoing project called Genetrix Foundation, is a fictional museum that comes from a long tradition where artists mingled and interfered with museums display and curation. It started from a collaboration between the artist and two museums: Horniman Museum London and their etnogtraphic section and The Museum of History of Transylvania, Romania, which supported my research through documentation materials. The exhibits emphasize the often mediocre interpretation of artefacts, museums becoming the established unquestionable authority to evaluate moments in history. At times hilarious, Genetrix Foundation becomes a soft playground for anthropological ideas and a place to extend history in our visual culture, defined by consumerism and corporate interests.
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – Venus 320mmx320mmx1800mm porphiry stone, LED lights and mini-display, acrylic, metal Porphyry is the stone used in antiquity only for statues of gods, with a method that has been lost for centuries, the Roman \’Venus Genetrix\’ being one example. \’Venus\’ as a semantic definition has been bent in many ways to refer to feminism or prehistoric cultures.
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – Venus
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – Venus
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – Dogu 320mmx320mmx1800mm chocolate, LED lights and minidisplay, acrylic, metal Lost relics in a ritual procession, in the same time as re-appropriation of prehistoric figurines, the meaning of these relics , be there even chocolate relics, can be interpreted and will be interpreted in various ways accordingly to the specialism involved.
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – Dogu
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – Dogu
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – Dogu
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – t s c h a g g a t t a 9 min 26sec. video installation https://vimeo.com/257120734 Documentation of a performance taking place in the Horniman Museum London, inside their ethnographic section. The video is asking wether a ritual mask lost its meaning when it became a museum object, and if museums are using a process of historical and cultural mummification to present us with dead objects.
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – t s c h a g g a t t a
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – t s c h a g g a t t a
G e n etri x F o u n d a tio n – C e r e m o n i a l A r t e f a c t 270 x 340 mm lead, iron nails Somewhere stored away from sight, in a Transylvanian history museum, there is an object of ambigous provenience, that sparked controversies and theories. Is not an unfamiliar process in archeology to debate or challenge theories regarding artefacts, and this shows us the relentless desire to imagine new pasts, shaped by our age and culture.
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T s c h a gg a tt a ( h i dd e n ) 2000mm x 1200mm wood, sheep hide, monitor, glass case An exhibit belonging to the Genetrix Foundation pseudo-institution. A spring festival mask is being exhibited behind glass, while the video shows the resurrection of the mask in a museum of ethnology.
T s c h a gg a tt a ( h i dd e n )
T s c h a gg a tt a ( h i dd e n )
‘ C a r v e n go d s lo n g go n e . . .’ 150 x 80 mm japanese plaster figure, river sandstone, meteor rock
‘ C a r v e n go d s lo n g go n e . . .’
P ossi b le A z te c M a s k 330 x 230 mm wood, semi-precious stones, electronic circuits components Future temple of post-modern humans will require adequate reliquaries, same as the christian saints’ remains where embellished with gold and precious stones. Believers will leave their offers at the shrines reflecting their society, instead of pearls and rubies – electronic devices. People will never cease to want to be marveled by the unknown , by a sacred being.
K a t a b a sis performance Katabasis was a collaborative work with Alexis Niarchos and James Tabbush, as part of a program of events by DIG Collective London. It took the form of a performance, a series of sculptures and a film. Ideas about folk culture, archaeology and its opposite, the aesthetic and its relationship to meaning were flying about everywhere. A team of archaeologists elsewhere on the site were attempting to erase all traces of meaning from the objects, inadvertently creating sculptures. Objects were be divided according to ritual function. The Demon Moloch was involved.
K a t a b a sis
M a r x ’ s Co n es aprox. 340 x 650 mm concrete, paper, book The innocence of childhood allowed for playful games that only later, as adult, I realised how ironic and dangerous were. Pages from Marxist and Leninist books were teared off to create cones..we were ”killing” each other with ideas and propaganda.
M a r x ’ s Co n es
P a per c o n es 1 / 2 1030mm x 280mm concrete, steel As child during communism, paper cones shooting games where a distraction from the bleak aggressive brutalism of the surrounding buildings. The feeling of being surrounded by concrete monoliths stayed with me for years.
P a per c o n es 1 / 2
T ime ’ s O u t / O u t of T ime 250 x 1600 x 450 mm clock, bronze, wood, plaster Work exploring the abstract concept of time. We have a rich notion about what time is, from linear, flowing to metaphorical. Death is one existential feature of time that makes us wonder what happens with that ‘ time ’ concept after we die.
T ime ’ s O u t / O u t of T ime
T ime ’ s O u t / O u t of T ime
Core S a mple rope, portland stone Anthropocene is the latest fashion word to be used in the context of man’s impact on the planet. There is a common belief that this age is part of a cycle of events that have a spike in history culminating with disasters. The spiral in the stone is a symbol used in ethnographic artefacts across the world to describe the return to the beginning, the return to the source.