OASIS. GREEN IDENTITY

September 17 – October 17, 2021, Stațiunea Tinerilor Naturaliști, Timișoara

Avantpost artists: Aura Bălănescu, Ciprian Chirileanu, Cosmin Haiaș, Marius Jurca, Livia Mateiaș, Liliana Mercioiu Popa, Sorin Oncu, Renée Renard, Petrică Ștefan, Bogdan Tomșa, Nicolae Velciov

Invited artists: Platform MQ18 München / Co-curator Narcisa Fluturel and Collective Invisible Flock Leeds / Co-curator Catherine Baxendale

Curator: Maria Orosan Telea

Project Manager: Aura Balanescu

CONCEPT. The project Oasis. Green identity aims to problematizes the relationship between the anthropic environment and the natural environment, the accelerated urbanization and the deepening of the imbalance between the built-up areas and the green spaces inside the cities. Visionary solutions from environmental activists, architects concerned with sustainable design and agricultural sustainability policy specialists include ideas such as improving local environmental health and revitalizing built-up areas through urban gardens, ecological rehabilitation through the contribution and benefit of the communities. Far from being solved, these acute problems of urban living have a considerable impact on the social well-being and emotional state of each individual. The pandemic with the moments of forced calm that it caused determined once again the awareness of the responsible action on nature and the benefit of a balanced coexistence with the ecosystems that surround us.

The Oasis. Green identity exhibition aims to reflect on these aspects through the presence of artists who work with the space, with objects and new media technologies, who build coherent discourses in relation with the place and situation in which they are going to insert their conceptual and material structures. Their interventions will drown attention towards a green area in the Eastern part of Timisoara, a surprising space due to the diversity of the typology of natural landscapes it puts together. The Young Naturalists Resort belongs to the University of Agricultural Sciences from Timișoara and is at the same time a dendrological park, an acacia forest, an urban garden, an area with ponds, a didactic household.

The specificity of the Avantpost group, crystallized during the 11 exhibitions held between 2014 and 2019, is given by this ability to dialogue frankly with alternative exhibition spaces. The site-specific practice, visible especially in the exhibitions Universallowed (2017, Tower of the former Battery Factory) and In Vitro Veritas (2019, Timișoara North railway station), will be one of the important purposes of the Oasis project, which aims at the positive impact that art can have on mediating the relationship between the community and nature in its immediate vicinity. The standard exhibition will be replaced by an experimental curatorial formula, in which the works will be partially physically isolated from each other, due to the large distances between them, but will live together due to the common concept.