BUCURESTI

Instituto Cervantes Bucharest hosts from the 21st of September, at 18:30, the opening of the exhibition "Towards the sea", by the Spanish artist Clara Durán, a multimedia installation which investigates the symbolic and conceptual possibilities of water. The core of the exhibition is constituted by photographs shot along the rivers Argeș, Ialomița, Jiu, Olt, Nera and Cerna, having women as protagonists together with different flows of water, all of them affluents of the old and, somehow mythical, Danube, a river venerated by the old geto-thracian civilizations surrounded by rituals, practices and beliefs, some of them of universal nature and yet connected with ancient cultures. The purpose of this installation is to create a sensorial space that invites the visitor to explore her/his relation with water and, at the same time, to reflect upon the environmental reality which we are nowadays living in. Clara Durán takes a work mechanism which originates in photography, interpreting reality with the first brushstroke of paint. To this combination, she adds, through synaesthesia, poetry, performance, video and sound. “The more artistic resources the thicker the language will be, says Clara Durán. It is precisely the richness of the communication the window that an artist has to connect with the audience. It is a complex process in which a balance needs to be found constantly, accepting order and chaos.” Remembering the fight at university for not separating projects for every course, Clara Durán points out: “the wish to break the fragmentation and categorisation of knowledge amplifies the potential of expressive freedom.” In the same way, the artist’s theoretical research methodology is made of several branches of study like ecology, sociology, philosophy and spirituality. “Water, she says, is an extraordinary substance, unique in its behaviour and in its properties. To approach it, it needs to be studied from multiple perspectives.” Furthermore, Clara Durán integrates vernacular practices, looking for sources of inspiration in local artists. Therefore, collaboration is a crucial element of the project. Later, on the 19th of October, the project will be presented with more detail at a conference. More information: www.bucarest.cervantes.es/ro Clara Durán (b. Madrid) – graduated in Fine Arts at Universidad Complutense of Madrid and at Loyola University Chicago; she holds a Masters in Visual Arts from University of the Arts London. In the present she is based in Bucharest, where she develops her artistic career and, parallel to it, she is part of the team of the National Museum of Contemporary Art. Her projects, focused on the analysis of the hydrological forms, have been exhibited in Spain, United States, United Kingdom, Norway and Romania.