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You Betrayed the Party.. in Bucharest
The fourth exhibition of the project opened at the Anca Poterașu Gallery in Bucharest
Anca Poterașu Gallery in Bucharest, Romania
7. 12. 2024 – 30. 1. 2025
This iteration of the project “You Betrayed the Party Just When You Should Have Helped It” in Bucharest focuses on the dissemination of memory, contextualizing Romania’s own traumatic past. The exhibition was conceived through two interwoven spatial concepts. The main gallery space was designed as a place for reflection, complementary thinking, and participation. It featured visual materials such as drawings and photographs, presenting the outcomes of artistic research and site-specific actions, as well as the results of a participatory process developed in collaboration with the public.
In parallel, an audio-visual installation was set up across two gallery rooms functioning as a simulacrum of an island. This installation evoked the atmosphere, sounds, and gestural interpretations of the everyday tortures endured by women imprisoned on the islands of Goli Otok and Sveti Grgur, using emotion as a means of transmission, with performances by Zrinka Užbinec, Jasna Jovićević, and Annette Giesriegl.
The exhibition opening began with a conversation between historian Claudia-Florentina Dobre and feminist anthropologist Renata Jambrešić Kirin, who spoke about the discomfort experienced by female political prisoners in Yugoslavia and Romania, under the title “Discomfort of Being a Female Prisoner. The Cases of Yugoslavia and Romania.” As part of the opening, two clay figurine-making workshops were held under the name “850 Women for 850 Women”, a series initiated in 2022 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka. These workshops invited participants to actively engage in preserving collective memory of traumatic political histories. A reading session was also held, and the clay workshops continued throughout the exhibition’s duration.
Previous iterations of the exhibition were presented at the Historical and Maritime Museum of Istria in Pula (2021), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka (2022), and the Jorge B. Vargas Museum in Manila, the Philippines (2023).
The exhibition team included anthropologist Renata Jambrešić Kirin, psychotherapist Dubravka Stijačić, and historian Claudia-Florentina Dobre. The curators were Irena Bekić and Anca Mihuleț. Coordination and management were handled by Anca Poterașu, with Camelia Ducaru as project manager. The production was led by Rafaela Bîrlădeanu, and the translation was provided by Iris Rusu. Graphic design was done by Andrei Sendrea / Reg. Project photo documentation was created by Vlad Dragne, Anca Mihuleț, and Ivo Martinović.
The exhibition in Bucharest was realized as part of the project (In)Visible Traces. Artistic Memories of the Cold War, organized by Documente – Center for Dealing with the Past, and funded by the European Union.