What do we need art for?

To get lost. To take side roads. To find new ways. To keep going.

About my experience/contribution within the frame of Historia-Hysteria project

When I first started to look into the collections of the MNIT, I wondered why an Egyptian collection was present in a museum about the history of Transylvania. I was even more intrigued by this curiosity when I learned that it included a 1:1 scale copy of the Rosetta Stone. It echoed with another project of mine.

Since 2018, I have been collecting souvenirs from important European museums such as the Louvre, The British Museum or the Neues Museum. I gathered a few copies of famous pieces from their collection, turned into gadgets (magnet, keyring, rubber, paper weight, etc). Then I started to photograph them with a black background as if they were precious things. You could think they look like the real artefacts at first glance but if you look closely, you can notice small inconsistances. You can buy a crazy number of « Egyptian-like » products in the British Museum giftshop and the Rosetta Stone is definitely a star among them. This « egyptomaniac » phenomenon sounds to me as a Hysteria case of History.

While reading the documentation the museum sent me about the most famous objects of the Egyptian collection in Cluj, the mummies and a series of amulets and statues, I realized that these little objects could have the contemporary function of amulets of some kind, as if we need to take away the heritage part. And maybe it could ward off bad luck. Is the copy of a copy still efficient against the evil eye? Anyway, the Egyptian collection isn’t on display and the people in the museum forgot about the copy of the Rosetta Stone. For my part, as the Historia-Hysteria project turned into a long-distance thing, I decided to take my Rosetta Stone paper weight out of my boxes.

Until I can see the real copy of the Rosetta Stone in Cluj and until the museum shows this collection again, I’ll work with the material they sent me, my souvenirs, Art history books, Wikipedia and online images in order to make a small artist book. My contribution for Historia/Hysteria is a single / unique multiple, an artist book which peels the image off an iconic object. The context and the frame of the project drove me to explore the mechanisms of reproduction, to rethink about the objects I already gathered and to look for new ways to disrupt their image. (To be followed).

Where I am (situated) right now (it could be artistically, geographically or both)

I left my former appartement in Poitiers in the beginning of the year and I had no more place during quarantine. I spent this period wondering where I wanted to live and I figured that I need to find a territory in which my artistic practice could resonate and grow. In June, I moved to Verdun, France. I didn’t know anyone there and I barely knew the city. But I knew that I have something to do there.

I’m both artistically and geographically in a particular area where the present seems to interfere with the past. The scars of the war on the landscape and architecture are visible everywhere in and around Verdun. My research on collective memory started to shift since I arrived here. I don’t know how long I’ll be staying but I organized a living space that suits me and fits with my artistic research… as long as we can’t travel.