Staycation

CTG Collective, Sandwich and Catinca Tabacaru Gallery are pleased to announce the opening of Staycation, an exhibition mounted across two Bucharest spaces – Galeria Catinca Tabacaru and Sandwich Offspace – featuring 6 Berlin-based and 6 Romanian artists. While the exhibition is the most visible part of the project, it is also a direct response to a week-long Symposium that took place in July 2021 in Bucharest, introducing all participants to the City and to each other. Sourcing a connection between the current global pandemic and feminist thought does not yield immediate satisfaction. How does baking a focaccia, drifting through Delta Văcărești, or collective napping connect to, say, ecology, environmentalism and solidarity? The Staycation dialogues moved as fast as slow-living can, having a gentle rhythm, discussion at its core, and the present moment, as important references in the ethos of its resulting exhibition. Five months later, the 12 artists come together to share their reflections on that time and space spent together. Addressing concepts including the current state of control on movement and travel, and the inevitably human and ecological consequences of the current pandemic, the exhibition reveals opposing and contradictory forces that mutually shape each other: personal vs. universal, collective vs. individual, private vs. public. This group exhibition addresses these dualities not simply through verbal correlation, but through an immersion into the physical practices of each artist in dialogue with a place they inhabit(ed) alone and together. This visual dialogue operates as an experiment documenting the uncertainty of our present and near future. It examines concepts spanning motherhood in the art-world context, the social roles taken up or inherited within domestic space, living and working within “the center” or its periphery, and the holy balance between leisure and work. Staycation is an utopian project in which the dérive is employed throughout its general approach. These women’s lives are immersed in the everyday while they question the psycho-social and ecological layers of their collaborative living. Striving for unity and inquisitiveness in the experience of leisure, they move forward together in this longer-term project, cultivating lasting artist-to-community relationships. Partnered with Goethe Institut Bucharest For more information please contact us at [email protected] + [email protected] STAYCATION is a project co-created by Rachel Monosov, Catinca Tabacaru, and Daniela Pălimariu. PART I: Berlin >> Bucharest July 2021 – January 2022