Viviane Sassen

Secret Wing / Aripa Secreta, 20 September 2021 - 15 November 2021

Interart Triade Foundation in collaboration with Timișoara National Art Museum are delighted to present the international exhibition Secret Wing within the framework of “Our Other Us”, the fourth edition of Art Encounters Biennial, 2021.

This project is the result of a long-term collaboration between the renowned Romanian poet, essayist and philosopher, Bogdan Ghiu and international curator Maria Rus Bojan.

At a time of global uncertainty and crisis of meaning, this exhibition proposes an epistemological revisit of contemporary artistic practices since the 1980’s from the perspective of poetry.

Secret Wing is a metaphor, encapsulating the tensions and contradictions of a postmodern poetics permeated by an acute sense of loneliness and isolation. The exhibition takes as a starting point the idea that the 1980’s activated inner and collective resources forging prolific intersections between art and poetry. This decade is significant, because, having immediately preceded the reunification of Europe through the implosion of the communist regimes and the fall of the Berlin Wall, it led to a burst of creativity and a high concentration of artistic resources and moral resistance.

Secret Wing takes its title from the eponymous volume of poetry by Mariana Marin (1956- 2003), one of the most emblematic and uncompromising authors of the 1980s Generation in Romania. In this volume, Marin defines her own poetic example of resilience, by identifying herself with Anne Frank’s traumatic two-year isolation experience in the secret annex of a Canal house in Amsterdam. Affirming poetry as a moral resource against totalitarianism, Mariana Marin articulates an ethical mode of poetic thinking by imagining her own “secret wing”, a form of inner architecture designed to shelter dreams and ideals; a space where the self discovers profound resources of poetic expression in resonance with collective history.

Today, contemporary art is entrapped in its own vicious circle by explicitly criticizing what it continues to practice implicitly: the modernist reductionist cult of the present, acceleration, speed, and unlimited progress. Poetry is thus essential to create the opposite experience: moments of interiority and respite - “secret wings” - where only in the form of shadows and traces, things are rescued from the tyranny of individual reason and can work freely to restore the balance between us and the world.

The important private collections which made this exhibition possible, should be seen as unexpected "secret wings" of contemporary art, where now the collector acts as a catalyst stimulating new insights and aesthetical experiences.

Selected artists:
Lucas Arruda, Vlad Basarab, Ion Bitzan, Kasper Bosmans, Alin Bozbiciu, Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976), Cornel Brudașcu, James Lee Byars (1932-1997), Sophie Calle, Simion Cernica, Traian Cherecheș, Yahon Chang, René Daniëls, Marlène Dumas, Constantin Flondor, Octav Grigorescu (1933-1987), Johannes Heldén, Peter Jecza (1939-2009), Anselm Kiefer, Sigalit Landau, Gherasim Luca (1913-1994), Lucassen, Ioan Aurel Mureșan, Ioana Nemeș (1979-2011), Iulia Nistor, David Robilliard (1952-1988), Viviane Sassen, Ioan Sbârciu, Kathrin Schlegel, Mladen Stilinović (1947-2016), Nora Turato, Ulay (1943-2020).

Curated by Maria Rus Bojan and Bogdan Ghiu

Secret Wing / Aripa Secreta, 20 September 2021 - 15 November 2021
Timisoara Național Art Museum
Timisoara, Romania