Cimilituri

Dealu Frumos, Romania, July 2012

The stereotype is like a stamp that multiplies several times on every single template. Creating stereotypes can be dangerous. Cultural stereotypes lead to prejudices, the negative opinions of others. Stereotypes and prejudices are major obstacles in communication and, more importantly, the causes of actions and negative emotions. Prejudices that are based on simplyfing any race of people in a narrow and negative stereotype can have tragic consequences such as discrimination, violence and in extreme cases, genocide.   

With a team of 5, we have developed, merging the ideas of each member, a modern trinity, placed at the intersection of 3 paths, next to the main road of the village, crossing the boundary to the Old Citadel. With the instalation that we propose , we want to ruin one of the most common misconceptions, namely racial, regarding minorities. We integrate and disintegrate the cube as a symbol of the Romes minority stereotypes (as special case), in a variety of pieces of sensations, visions , feelings, contradictions, fragments of shadows and lights.         

The instalation represents  a place where you should stop and meditate, with a dynamic character, involving the occurrence of different sensations .”We” will now try the feeling of a person inside the structure followed by the prejudices of others, watching and learning from other’s perspective and understanding  what it really means the profile and culture of people different from us , to be able to neutralize, to ” ruin” stereotypes when we encounter them. Again and again, the light invades the atmosphere of meditation.

Each face of the cube has a different signification, and are opposed. The Earth face, filled with sand and the footsteps of the children, is opposing the Light face, an empty ceiling towards the blue, clean sky. The entrance from both sides into the installation is represented through two simetric gates of eyes, like the ones which always follow, judging, scrutinising, wondering. The last two faces represent the dialog between the antropic and the mother earth. The surface made from liniar ropes represents the antropic and is facing the old houses of the village. The opposite one is placed very close to the fence of the Old Citadel, as a symbol of the boundary which visualy is destroyed and embraced by the trinity. The last frame reffered to is facing and old tree as a “genius loci” of the Beginning, the Alfa, the spirit of the Nature, the spirit within us.

The trinity is a symbol and an art metaphor, the starting point of all duplications and dedublations, which signifies a reflected knowledge, made under the incidence of the moon, water, night and the feminine principle.  

Rural installation 200 x 200 x 200 cm, 
team: Ioana Binica, Ioana Mitrea, Alexandru Greceniuc, Nicolae Binica

with Arhitext Summer School

copyright photo: Ioana Mitrea