Iulia Toma & Claudiu Cobilanschi
area: Media Art
Key Facts
nationality
Romaniaarea
Media Artresidence
Bucharestrecommending institution
tranzit.org/ERSTE Stiftungtime period
February 2016 - February 2016Iulia Gabriela Toma (b. 1974) is a mixed-media artist who works with the means of aesthetic expression through textile, as well as with photography, painting, installation and text in each work. Recently she has been focusing on social issues that she expresses in her own individual way: feminism, women's rights, interpersonal relations of closed communities, the materiality of urban living, social justice, etc.. Toma builds a personal discourse that is expressively and aesthetically organised in visual and activist orientations, each time trying to place the balance between message and material at an ever increasingly elaborate level. She teaches in the Department of Art & Design, Textile section at the National University of Arts Bucharest, practicing pedagogy in harmony with her personal activity as well as with the innovation required for didactic activity within the artistic discipline. Among her recent exhibitions are: 1st Timisoara Art Encounters APPEARANCE & ESSENCE, 2015 Mapping Bucharest: Art, Memory, and Revolution 1916-2016, group show part of Vienna Biennale 2015, MAK Vienna, Twilled Connections, group show, tranzit.ro, Bucharest, Kinder. Küche. Kirche, solo show, Calina Gallery, Timisoara and Untitled Fighter, solo show, 2014, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest. Represented by Ivan Gallery, Bucharest.
Claudiu Cobilanschi lives at the blurry boundary between art and media, using, as journalist, multiple mediums for different kinds of expression and, as an artist, the benefit of these media's mutual conflict. In his practice, he is approaching issues of stereotypical thinking, forecasting and physicality, etc. projecting messages in different mediums: photography & performance, super8 cinema, studies of expressiveness in conventional images, video-documents of immigrants, DIY saunas, interactive movies, etc. He has worked within the framework, and tested the limits of institutions such as ParadisGaraj & Die Kunsthalle Bukarest, Platforma & Salonul de Proiecte Anexa MNAC, Barbara Seiler Gallery, Kunsthalle Winterthur, Depo Instanbul, Rotwand Gallery, Muzeum Quartier, IGBildendeKunst Vienna, Nida ArtColony Lithuania, HBK Saar, Romanian Cultural Institute, MotorenHalle Dresden, Kunsthalle Krems, etc.
Timeline
2015 “A phenological approach to sylviculture and its followers” Calina, Timisoara
2015 “Few were happy with their condition” Motorenhalle Dresden, Kunsthalle Winterthur
2015 Curatorial Team @ Platforma MNAC Anexa, Bucharest
2015 “Bucuresti VEST” Salonul de Proiecte, MNAC Anexa, Bucharest
2014 “Reflecting Youth”, IG BILDENDEKUNST, Viena
2014 “Sentimental Scientist”, Rotwand Gallery, Zurich
2014 “concrete.doc” Random Access Festival, Arad
2014 “The GroundWater”, Platforma MNAC Anexa, Bucharest
2013 “The Night Shift” Platforma MNAC Anexa, Bucharest
2013 “One Man Stand for Juorupeili”, Raahe, Finland
2013 “SensorsForSensors”, Nida ArtColony, Lithuania
2013 "End Pit" – DEPO Instanbul
2012 "Die Kunsthalle Bukarest" - www.kunsthalle.ro
2012 “Eight and a Half Works”, Salonul de Proiecte, MNAC Anexa, Bucharest
2011 “Just another brick in the wall”, Barbara Seiler Gallery, Zurich
2011 NEW LANDS, Alert Studio, Bucharest
2011 The Ist Fair of Spectral Institutions, Contemporary Art Gallery of Brukenthal Museum, Sibiu
2010 ParadisGaraj ,The Knot, Berlin & Bucharest
2009 Superheroes, New Gallery of the Romanian Cultural Institute, Venice
2008 „Die DEUTSCHEN”, HBK Saar Sommerakademie & UNARTE
Residencies
2016 MuseumsQuartier, Vienna
2014 Kunsthalle Krems, AT
2013 Pihajoky, FI
2013 Nida Art Colony, Nerida, LT
2012 Fostering Artistic Practices, Instanbul, TR
2011 Romanian Cultural Institute, Paris, FR
Iulia Toma has presented her Phd thesis in visual arts with the title “From subject to object in contemporary textile art” and wants to continue her research with an extensive study of the MAK collections, as a necessary addition to a future publication based on her doctoral thesis.
Her enrollment for an elective university course would greatly benefit from the vast documentation and research capacities facilitated during this residency. This residency would also be a welcome addition to her participation to the Vienna Bienale 2015, supporting her emerging career by being thus her first artistic residency of importance outside of Romania.
Claudiu Cobilanschi was the artist in residence at the Kunsthalle Krems (Nov – Dec 2014). This enabled a first contact to the Natural History Museum in Vienna, enabling him the potential to develop a direct collaboration with researchers and scientists working for the NHM in Vienna, that would support a future art piece based on meteorites found in Romania.