The confinement of artists from all fields of art in the first half of 2020, during the most severe restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic, translated in some cases into opportunities for new and inevitable introspections and discoveries of new forms of expression. Visual artists, often dependent on direct contact (visual or even tactile) between the recipient and the work of art, on a face-to-face visit to the gallery where it is exhibited, one of the preferred places where you can actually interact directly with the work of art, were perhaps the most affected by the social distance imposed throughout 2020 and beyond.
Romanian Cultural Institute - Lisbon therefore proposes a type of revenge - a retrospective of the pandemic, from the perspective of the NOIMA group. The very title of the exhibition, s o b r e V I V E R (which means both "survival" and "about being"), inscribed as a fraction in the visual materials promoting the event, suggests the fracture that the Covid-19 pandemic represents in the lives of artists, in our lives and in the life of our society in general. NOIMA's artists focused on the language of land-art and on the video document (sent for distance exhibitions). The meetings were restricted, in isolated environments, chalets, monasteries, etc., without an audience. It was also a good time to process and archive data collected during NOIMA's nearly 20 years.
Curator: Andrei Rosetti
Ciprian Bodea, Dan Gherman, Cosmin Frunteș, Andrei Rosetti, Sorin Scurtulescu
Photo © Tudor Cataraga, Dumitru Gusa, Lorena Nedelcu
