Between October 25-31, 2024, Bucharest-based artist Bogdan Lupescu will create a mural titled "Dimensions of Migration" at the Parallel City Portal (accessible from Ioan Curea Street), as part of the Moving Fireplaces - The Legacy project. We invite you to stop by to greet Bogdan, lend a hand, and answer some of the questions he has prepared for you.
The project "Dimensions of Migration" by Bogdan Lupescu was selected through the Call for Projects for the Moving Fireplaces Festival 2024. It is being carried out in partnership with UPT Creative Campus.
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About "Dimensions of Migration"
Following his experience with the project "Every Experience is a Journey" from the 2023 Moving Fireplaces Festival, where he brought together 4 portraits and 4 scenes evoking the results of research from Romania, Serbia, and Hungary, Bogdan Lupescu proposes a new project, "Dimensions of Migration," in the form of a mural.
In the 2023 work, Bogdan focused on how personal experiences of displacement have a significant impact, transforming communities and personal identities, both emotionally and materially. Now, he invites us to live through the tension of the unknown, where every step is unpredictable, yet defining for personal identity. In facing uncertainties, the memory of traditions, family, and the hope of temporary displacement become guides for individual identity, serving as the foundation on which people rebuild their new lives in new places.
As part of this project, the artist intends to dedicate time to passersby during the creation of the mural and public events (such as the opening), answering their questions and discussing how, and if, the phenomenon of migration has influenced their lives.
The work "Dimensions of Migration" aims to capture the inner turmoil between the familiar and the unknown. Migration is not just about physical relocation but also about adaptation and preservation, about traditions, memories, and stories that transcend personal space and enrich both the cultural space of origin and that of the destination.
One of the hundreds of anecdotes gathered during the Moving Fireplaces project: "So then, the husband of a painter went to a cosmonaut and asked him: what's it like on the moon? You have to understand, back then in Uzdin, there were no paved roads, it was like a village, with mud, wandering around. But one of them said: well, what's it like, it's like here!" ("Painting Against Forgetting" by Ionuț Suciu, 2022) encapsulates the perception we have of distant places, imagining them as both bizarre and familiar, highlighting the interplay between reality and imagination.
Through this project, "Dimensions of Migration," Bogdan Lupescu shows us that relocation means more than just leaving one place and arriving in another.
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The event is a component of the Moving Fireplaces Festival 2024, part of the Moving Fireplaces - The Legacy project, organized and implemented by the Prin Banat Association. The project is part of the national cultural program "Timișoara - European Capital of Culture 2023" and is funded through the Legacy Timișoara 2023 program, managed by the Timișoara Municipality's Center for Projects, with funds allocated from the state budget by the Ministry of Culture.