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The world can be different, if we allow ourselves to think as much

Andreea Sarcani

The artistic journey followed by Ana Banica, after much searching in the fields of performance, multimedia installation and photography, has come to a halt this time with painting. The origins of this project, displayed this month at H’art Gallery are based around the idea of the sacredness of the ritual of eating. The means of expression is decorative, the style almost that of miniatures, allowing the story to be told in thousands of strands. The medium used is novel: namely printed plastic material, the famous oilcloth, otherwise known as the humble plasticised tablecloth, which here becomes a generous and original material. The replacement of the tablecloth with oilcloth actually means a change of face of the world, of contemporaneousness, a plunge into a world of surrogates, a world of the artificial. We find ourselves in a world in which irony can become a permanent state. The mental approach proposed puts the question: What if this artificial world has an essence of its own?

This Romania illustrated by its objects is frequently a sad Romania, marked by a crisis of values, in which young people savour a slice of utopia cake in the shape of a house, but also a nostalgic space for stories from long ago. The allusions to the childhood world, from which it refuses to detach itself, are many. The animals presented in an almost Eden-like environment, the pattern with the map of Romania, reminiscent of classroom geography lessons, figures of loved ones with saints’ faces: all of these become instruments of struggle in a world of the ridiculous, of the crisis, and are cardinal points in the chaos.

“I think that contemporary art is waiting to identify and to express in an original way the malady which Romanian society, still in a transition, is suffering from, which could alter its tradition and cultural identity. Although it sometimes uses aggressive and shocking modes of expression, art must also remain a Tahiti of the soul, an oasis of calm and truth, both for the artist and for the consumer,” Ana Banica says.

The world in its plastic interpretation is profoundly marked by the idea of duality, becoming a space for the great questions. Painting is something perishable, and at the same time something precious. Love is ephemeral, and also sacred. The world is gross, but also profound and full of significance. Everything invites one to a feverish mind game, in which contemplation first gives way to the smile and then to nostalgia.

In this universe of obsessive dichotomies, of its yes and no philosophy, this confrontation between real and artificial, between sombre and happy, between prayer and blasphemy, between truth and fiction, proposes to us in a subtle way a world beyond good and evil, a world of nuances. Ana Banica’s works abound in originality, going well beyond the zone of the experimental and into the chromatic, generous in a different way, and find their sense in a system of values which wants to be reinvented.

“We should not be obsessed with the idea of originality. Originality is not higher than sincerity. Probably everything has been experimented with in one form or another. Criticisms of taking and using methods and elements from other artists are unjustified and even hilarious for as long as it is clear that we live in a time of interpretations and especially of reinterpretations. The artist should be predominantly spontaneous in his or her expression, and in no case a placid bookkeeper, who like Sisyphus looks for a means of expression, which nobody else has discovered or ever used,” affirms Ana Banica.

Romania is her source of inspiration, almost exclusively. The fact that she was born here is not a coincidence at all. Romania is a paradise from the point of view of ideas, because it offers a rowdy, primitive reality, with just a garnish of Western influence. “The relationship with the outside world is necessary for us, not in order to demonstrate our talents or to receive a sort of Western artists’ visa through the prizes we win abroad, unfortunately so necessary to Romanian critics in order to give us truly positive assessments, but to measure our degree of sincerity.”

Although she doesn’t like to say she has certain favourite artists, Ana has a special affinity for Marina Abramovic, Pipillotti Rist and Frida Kahlo.

One of the projects she recalls with particular warmth is “Opus Murivale” which took place during 2003, and which aimed to attract attention to homosexuality in Romania through art. “It was a novel experience, in which we had the opportunity to understand that people who are isolated and marginalised from society and by the prejudices of others, perhaps have more to offer in human terms. I don’t understand why these spiritual mutilations exist in the twenty first century.”

The swing of the pendulum between reality and fantasy can constitute a plea against prejudices, against clichés, in which the human mind is very vulnerable. The world can be different if we allow ourselves to think it. Ana Banica’s art doesn’t offer a solution, it just asks itself and us, literally and figuratively to leave the limited universe of the black and white world.

An exhibition of Ana Banica's paintings entitled Sarut mana pentru masa runs at H'art Gallery until April.