What artists are doing now. Romanian artist Edith Torony in Timisoara
An inspiration and mutual solidarity project for the creative industries
In the current situation, clearly our top priority is to take care of our families, friends and fellow citizens. Nevertheless, while public life is paralyzed and museums, galleries and cultural institutions are closed, in many of us neither the urge to work nor the creative spark have disappeared. In fact, quite the opposite is happening in what is turning out to be a time that befits self-reflection and the generation of new ideas for the future. Although we are at home and self-isolating, we all – artists, creatives and Arterritory.com – continue to work, think and feel. As a sort of gesture of inspiration and ‘remote’ mutual solidarity, we have launched the project titled What Artists Are Doing Now, with the aim of showing and affirming that neither life nor creative energy are coming to a stop during this crisis. We have invited artists from all over the world to send us a short video or photo story illustrating what they are doing, what they are thinking, and how they are feeling during this time of crisis and self-isolation. All artist stories will be published on Arterritory.com and on our Instagram and Facebook accounts. We at Arterritory.com are convinced that creativity and positive emotions are good for the immune system and just might help us better navigate through these difficult times.
From her studio in Timișoara, Romanian artist Edith Torony answers a short questionnaire by Arterritory.com:
Are you working on any projects right now in your studio? If so, could you briefly describe them?
I developed a new series named Synthetic Future last year in late summer. My paintings gradually became more of a surrealist journey in the universe of the urban periphery. Allegorically recomposed, the devastating effects of junk invasion and consumerism on our living space, all these reminiscences of our daily waste are caught dancing, floating in their singularity. I already exhibited the first works in 2019 in Vienna, Austria, but that was just the beginning. Since then I have worked to expand the series, to evolve and give a different feel in my latest works. I like my works to be a fusion of gestural, abstract painting with surreal or mysterious scenes and moods where the eye can also find some peaceful areas to rest upon. But in Synthetic Future, I want elements to be more and more concretely shaped and intense in colour, similarly to what we see in the advertisement aesthetic, supermarkets, or product packaging design. It’s an invasion of information and products, so I want my works to look like that, more powerful and disturbing. In April of this year, a solo show for my latest works would have taken place in Lugano, Switzerland, but due to the pandemic it was postponed.
What is your recipe for survival in a time of almost only bad news?
I quit watching TV news during these times. I have installed on my phone a news application which selects only important official news, and that keeps me up to date. But that’s it; I don’t want to become too anxious due to consuming a lot of news. Also, I changed my Facebook account name for a while and deleted all my personal data and photos, and this makes me avoid staying too much on the news feed too; I use it now only for my artist page. I was extremely annoyed by fake news and some people sharing all sorts of conspiracies and theories. For me it is very simple – you wash your hands very often and keep social distancing as much as you can for protecting yourself and others as well. If you live with elder family members in the same house, you can’t be irresponsible and not try to protect them. I now spend a lot of time in the garden or in the yard, being lucky to live in a house. I was more active in this area than in the studio, but I’m taking this as a productive break as well. It is important to have all kinds of activities to keep you mentally safe too.
What is something that we all (each of us, personally) could do to make the world a better place when this disaster comes to an end? It is clear that the world will no longer be the same again, but at the same time...there is a kind of magic in every new beginning.
It will not be the same for a while, but I think people tend to forget very quickly. If we don’t change our rush for producing and over-consuming, for these materialistic desires, then everything will be as before. If we start our life exactly from the same spot before the pandemic broke out, then we didn't learn anything. I think we have to take it slower.
The art world and the culture sector is one of the most affected. What is the main lesson the art world should learn from all this? How do you imagine the post-apocalyptic art scene?
It is normal to be affected in times like this when people are worrying more about primary needs. For me, the art world has become the art industry, where fabulous amounts of money are pumped into big projects, museums, galleries and biennials, and artists rise like pop stars. I don't criticize the artists; I have many favourites among them. I criticize the alert rhythm of production, like they are art factories, the standardization of an art world in which smaller artists don’t have a place. And, of course, the idea that you buy a work of art just as an investment, even if you don’t like it all that much. We monetize everything, and that’s not OK. I remember the articles about the sales of the work of Ghenie, the Romanian painter. As for the press... they first need this validation to see a great artist and present it to the public; why don’t you present his works better, his message, his style…? Some will remember him as that guy who sold some paintings for millions, and reduce him to this. We have to change our perception of values. And it is the duty of every artist to question their art now, their message for the people, and its ability to reach out.
***
Edith Torony is one of the over 400 artists that will take part in the exhibition “When the Globe is Home” (curated by Claudio Scorretti and Irina Ungureanu), which was expected to open at Gallerie delle Prigioni, Imago Mundi’s cultural centre in Treviso (Italy) last March, but had to be postponed due to the outbreak of Coronavirus. The title of the exhibition has been revealed to be a prophetic one, considering that now we are all experiencing a situation where our home has become our globe. Based on this, Imago Mundi (the contemporary art project promoted by Luciano Benetton) has launched a digital project that is taking place now on its social media accounts (Facebook @ImagoMundiArt; Instagram @Imago_Mundi_Art), asking its great artistic community (over 26,000 artists from all over the world, from Lithuania to Libya and Hawaii, from Fiji to Nepal and Canada) how they are living in this particular time. www.imagomundiart.com
***
Edith Torony was born in 1988 in Timișoara, Romania, where she lives and works.
She earned her BA and MA in Painting from the Faculty of Arts and Design, West University of Timișoara. She has been a member of the Romanian Union of Artists, Timisoara branch, since 2011. In 2019 Estopia Art Gallery showcased her solo show, Hybrid Playground. She has presented her works in other solo shows at Forma Gallery, Deva, in 2019; Pygmalion Gallery in 2018, and Calpe Gallery, Timișoara, in 2014, among others. She has participated in numerous group shows at Triade Gallery and Helios Gallery in Timișoara; Museum of Art, Arad; Museum of Art, Cluj-Napoca; European Parliament, Brussels; Marzia Frozen Gallery, Berlin, etc. She won the first prize for Painting at the Meeting Point International Biennial in Arad in 2017.
Edith Torony’s works allude to any peripheral urban area of our globalized world: what mostly strikes in these almost surrealist compositions, with insertions of pop art, is their strange and familiar air. While looking at them, you cannot but recognize objects, fragments or just allusions to everything that in our urban space is identified as surplus, useless or superfluous. That is, the reminiscences of consumerism, which we don’t know how to get rid of as soon as possible, and which, most of the times, end by being exiled at the margins of our world, extra muros. What would it be like if all these reminiscences of our daily waste would recompose by themselves a world of their own? Edith Torony’s works recompose exactly this world, in a sort of archaeology of urban periphery.
