Summer exhibition season 2024

The National Museum of Contemporary Art—MNAC Bucharest announces the Summer 2024 exhibition season as a part of the MNAC20bis anniversary, marking 20 years of existence in the Palace of Parliament.

The main event of the season, THE TWIST. Failing Empires, Triumphant Provinces (curators Călin Dan & Celia Ghyka), represents the second phase of a long- term research, initiated with THE TWIST. Five Provincial Stories from an Empire (Kunsthalle Bega, Timișoara, 2023-2024). A complex inquiry into the visual and cultural history of the TWIST as a motif, it originated in a reiterated reading of Plato’s allegory of the Cave describing the “turning around of the soul”: a movement both spiritual and physical, declined in this exhibition in its figurative, morphological, corporeal, and symbolic dimensions.

The concept is illustrated through an unconventional assemblage of archaeology, ethnography, applied arts, apparel, ethnographic and industrially mass-produced products that establish meaningful dialogues with contemporary art works from the collection of the National Museum of Contemporary Art and from private collections.

The TWIST is a crucial conceptual mediator for the morphological and symbolical exchanges between spiritual and material cultures, a perspective applied here to the millennia of civilisation developed on the territory conventionally named “the Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic space”. The show tracks the cultural and temporal trajectories of the different regions belonging to this territory that has been, during the long history, the contact zone between the margins of various empires (Greek, Roman, Ottoman, Hungarian, Austrian, Russian, Soviet, etc.). While being formally or informally under the influence of diverse geo-political ambitions, these provinces have developed in time a resilient identity of intersection that gives the notion of “provincial” a dignified significance. The exhibited objects are both a testimonial of imperial impulses, of their long-cast shadows and of this chemistry of assimilation. Within an unfolding spiralled movement, these echoes have been altered in time and space, and have in their turn been integrated, then abandoned, then rediscovered again at various moments in the history of these provinces, paradigmatic for the conglomerate of Southeastern-Eastern-Central Europe.

The exhibition display creates a space where this intellectual argument unfolds visually: a metaphor for human existence, the TWIST develops on multiple levels and in infinite variations.

The presentations of the MNAC Collection continue with PULS 21 (1st floor), featuring highlights from the Museum’s most recent acquisitions, and with Leviathan (2nd floor, concept by Călin Dan, curator Irina Radu), an original interdisciplinary project inviting viewers to a journey within the MNAC storage spaces.

Adina Mocanu presents Being Nina (4th floor, curator Sandra Demetrescu), a multi-layered exhibition reflecting the artist’s long-term research project of alternate universes, the otherworldly or on The Other as a an artistic tool, and which unfolds as a site-specific installation branching out from the namesake multi-channel video work in the MNAC collection. Centered around a fictional performative character—overlapping the identities of a Russian housewife with telekinetic powers (Nina Kulagina) famous during the Cold War, and of a contemporary version of her still living in Adina’s native Romanian village—this piece of magical realism is a bidirectional process of exploring the outside world and the (artistic) personal identity.

MNAC is this year’s co-organizer and host for the Crama Oprișor Awards for Contemporary Drawing—National Edition, an ongoing initiative to support young artists, students, and graduates of the Romanian art universities. The works of the 16 finalists are presented in the Auditorium.

In front of the Museum, Urbanology features two artists from Timișoara, Dan Vișovan and Bogdan Rața, including four monumental sculptures, part of a larger series initiated by the duo in 2022.

MNAC Sponsors: AQUA Carpatica, BRD Groupe Société Générale, Greentek Lighting, DARA Lighting, Crama Oprișor, LG Electronics România, Grup Transilvae, Molotow, ProfiArt, UniCredit Bank, Vitamin Aqua & Pop Cola

Info & press: info [​at​] mnac.ro