Irina Botea Bucan and Jon Dean
artists
ABOUT THE RESIDENT
Irina Botea Bucan has developed a symbiotic artist-educator-researcher framework that challenges dominant socio-political ideas and emphasizes human and non-human agency. She has participated in the Venice, Prague, and Gwangju Biennials and exhibited at the Pompidou Centre, Jeu de Paume, Kunsthalle Winterthur, and Reina Sofia. She has received awards including the Impakt Film Festival Silver Award and the International Residence at Recollets, Paris. Collaborating with Jon Dean since 2013, she teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is pursuing a PhD at Goldsmiths University titled “Unfinishing the cultural houses.”
Jon Dean’s career spans the UK, Romania, and beyond, developing community arts, experiential learning, and cultural programs. Jon also creates experimental art works exploring negotiated participation, collective action, and artistic production. His work has been featured in Fundata (Remarkable Romania Project), Timișoara, Bucharest (Rezidența 9, Arthub, Salonul de Proiecte), NTU, CCA Singapore, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse Le Monument. Together with Irina Botea Bucan he is co-creator of Casa Rădești residency in Romania.
ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
Topophilia and memory: a visual dialogue
Terra Siculorum is developing, along the paideic trail, another form of language, not one that is spoken or carried on the body, but one that is carved directly into wood, on the gates of Szekler households. Gaston Bachelard spoke of topophilia as the affective filter through which we inhabit, in the literal sense, the spaces we move through. We should therefore approach these gates not as a mere “accumulation” of objects, but as centres of meaning.
The carved Szekler gate represents precisely such a centre: a functional object (marking the entrance to a household) that is, at the same time, a declaration of identity. Its solar, vegetal, geometric and other motifs convey something about the status, beliefs, and story of the family living beyond it.
For this residency, the aim is to initiate a dialogue around the motifs represented on these gates and with the people of these communities, in order to discover how the spirit of the community or of the region, developed over generations by anonymous craftsmen into a precise visual language, can be translated for the contemporary world.
The residency thus becomes an exercise in active topophilia. In other words, this is not a matter of detached documentation, but of affectively inhabiting, through art, a space that already possesses its own well-articulated visual language.
ABOUT THE REGION
Far from being complete, the traveler’s cultural journey is beginning to take on meaning. Moreover, it becomes visible from gate to gate. In villages such as Mărtiniș and Atia, the Szekler gates contain motifs that represent an entire community. As they pass through these gates and enter the homes of local people, whether to rest or simply to share a story, hikers can begin to connect people’s lives and history with what remains visible and tangible.
We see differently when we experience a country on foot. Our eyes notice new things, whether they belong to the real world or are artistic expressions of it. The andesite markers are cultural signs in their own right, even though they also serve the practical purpose of guiding travelers along the route. The sculptures, too, seem to tell the story of the place.
These observations become part of the hiker’s inner journey, as they leave Terra Siculorum with a deeper understanding of Transylvania’s cultural landscape. The notions of “us” and “them,” and the perception of the other as a stranger, are concepts, not universal human truths.
ABOUT THE CULTURAL IMPRINT LEFT ON THE REGION
The artist leaves behind a tangible work of art inspired by the region’s distinctive artistic heritage. It may be a painting or any other visual art form, depending on the artist’s preferred medium. The work will be installed or exhibited within the community, as a direct expression of the influence of the motifs discovered along the route.
The work is not intended to be museified, but rather integrated into the living space of the village, as a new layer of meaning added to the existing one embodied by the carved gates. We envision a form of continuity, rather than rupture, between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary artistic practice.
