Nucleu 0007
Coordinated by Gabriela Mateescu, April – May 2019
The “Nucleu 0007” project consisted of 3 exhibitions: 2 solo shows and one duo, and it was the first one organized outside of Bucharest, at 2/2 artist run space in Timișoara
Episode 1: Before the Fetish, Behind the Illusion. Artists: Anastasia Manole and taietzel ticalos
Episode 2: A Young Engineer Killed Herself for an Artist. Artist: Roberta Curcă
Episode 3: AM AM. Artist: Andrei Mateescu
Episode 1: Before the Fetish, Behind the Illusion
Artists: Anastasia Manole and taietzel ticalos
The first duo exhibition showcased two similar works by the founders of the group Nucleu 0000. After a 15-year friendship and living together for the last 2 years, Anastasia Manole and taietzel ticalos have developed a symbiotic body of works inspired by their interests and their new way of living. Taietzel ticalos has been working in and out for a porn producing company for the last 4 years as a customer service and PR professional, promoting and creating inventive posts for their social media accounts. Knowing the insights of this industry, she became more interested in the kink side and started to incorporate specific fetishes into her body of work. For the past 2 years, her focus has been the online financial domination community, for which she created Cherie Pie, the 3D Goddess.
Displayed as a series of confessional videos, While the Future Unfolds follows Cherie Pie in her attempt to become a financial dominatrix. Deeply marked by Samantha (the sex doll) and the rise of female voices in AI, Cherie Pie takes her own voice from a free online text-to-speech service and enters the world of financial domination as Queen of Cups, the Inhuman Mistress. Providing insight into a BDSM niche where the power exchange may take place solely via the Internet, the narration highlights the fluidity between real and unreal as Cherie Pie develops her dominatrix persona.
Anastasia Manole`s work is part of her fight for artists that sustain themselves financially from external sources and an attempt to show the face of the new online wave of post-feminist sex work, with women feeling empowered by their own objectification, this time under their own terms. They reclaim their bodies, using them for the entertainment of men and emptying their pockets. The female body is objectified, but this time by the bearer; they subject themselves to the male gaze in compensation for financial gain, but from the protective environment of their home or studios that secures them and on their own terms.
Both projects make an effort to fight back against the male-dominant industry, as the adult industry is male-targeted, male-owned, and male-directed. Women, even independent freelancers, are subjected to men’s desires, requests, and fantasies. As the audience keeps getting younger and the request for violent and harsher imagery keeps growing, is there a way in which female performers can truly be independent of the male`s gaze?
Episode 2: A Young Engineer Killed Herself for an Artist
Artist: Roberta Curcă
The second episode of Nucleu 0007`s edition presents, this time to Timișoara`s audience, Roberta`s solo show from the Nucleu 0006 series that took place in Bucharest in 2018.
“Roberta is working with the randomness of found forms and patterns that she encounters every day, which are then archived in her very own system that is designated to occupy as little space as possible while preserving as much substance as it can. Roberta gathers information from plain textiles, different materialities of objects, plastic, rock, glass, pieces of wall plaster, and texts that are then stored, synthesized, and rearranged to create new personal structures. She managed to centralize these, reinterpreting them over and over through simple exercises like drawing the same line for over 100 days to submit herself to failure. The simplicity of her works is a result of forever gathering and throwing away the unnecessary. This perpetual game of collecting and discharging creates abstract tales in the numerous files where all these are deposited. Welcome to her office.” Gabriela Mateescu
“A few years ago, I started going with the flow. I developed an acute awareness that would be triggered at any time and that I would take a little too seriously. Maybe it was the frequent use of a camera phone that developed this awareness, or maybe it was this idea of capturing anything that resonated in order to review it later; nevertheless, I started adding to my collection of pictures, drawings, artworks, and screenshots from movies. The name of the exhibition is from one of such screenshots. Teresita Fernandez wrote in her 2013 commencement address that for “some inexplicable reason, we seem to believe most strongly not in the actual formal lessons, but rather in those details that get into our heads without our knowing exactly how they got there. Those pivotal lessons in our lives continue to work on us in subtle, subterranean ways.” I would add to this that sometimes we also believe strongly in details that get into our heads, with us knowing exactly how they got there but not knowing exactly why they got there. For the past few years, I have dived into unfamiliar terrain, expanding my horizons and my learning capacity, which has helped me navigate a bit better through this current expanded field of art (or so I think). I will not assume I know something (because there is so much to learn), nor am I letting myself be carried by ideas or trends; I go with a flow, my flow, as much as a flow can be your own.“ Roberta Curcă
Episode 3: AM AM
Artist: Andrei Mateescu
The exhibition “AM AM” plays with a double identity, inducing confusion and a challenge for the public at first sight to identify the authors. Who’s who? Father and son, both photographers, layer upon layer, named Andrei Mateescu. The found archive tries to unriddle questions that the young man might have had for his father. He constructs the story like a puzzle, through fantasy, while at the same time overlapping his own.
Same name, similar photographs. Andrei knew of the existence of the archive but decided to start his photography career without unfolding it. Recently coming to his attention, 15 years after his death, the coincidence struck him, and he initiated a journey of deciphering Andrei M’s past.
The exhibition does not propose a storyline through the actual archive, thus creating a biography, but memories intermingle among contemporary photography, reimagining an encounter that could have been but will never be. The project manifests the absence of the father while making him present through the son`s complementary work.
