Adina Pintilie’s Tu eşti un alt eu - O catedrală a corpului/You Are Another Me-A Cathedral of the Body, selected to represent the country at the 59th Venice Biennale, has been included in various rankings and articles covering the top national pavilions at the event.

The Art Newspaper has included Romania’s Pavilion in a list of the must-see pavilions in the Giardini della Biennale. “Many visitors entered only to immediately walk out when confronted with the often difficult imagery. But stay the duration and you might find the installation quite enrapturing: a visceral and unsettling experience that will stay with you for the rest of the Biennale.” (Aimee Dawson)

The Wallpaper mentioned Romania’s pavilion among the three that were “the talk of the art town,” alongside Canada (Stan Douglas) and Brazil (Jonathas de Andrade) in the Giardini.

In its turn, Artnews.com ranked the country’s pavilion among the 10 Best National Pavilions at the 2022 Biennale. "While most visitors will only attend the Giardini pavilion, this exhibition’s best portion is actually housed across the city, in the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research. The can’t-miss work there is a VR piece in which the viewer is allowed to look at, touch, and even see through the eyes of Pintilie’s subjects.” (Alex Greenberger)

Writing for The Guardian, Adrian Searle points out how “the social becomes the personal” in the project. “I wondered whether a biennale such as Venice, where much of the audience wanders in and out, is the right setting for these intimate and occasionally harrowing encounters. Nevertheless, I was touched and grateful for the participants’ willingness to expose their inner selves to Pintilie, who has worked with them over several years.”

Among other international outlets that highlighted Adina Pintilie’s work are Ocula Magazine, De Standaard, Numéro, and The Evening Standard, according to a release compiling the reviews on the project.

Tu eşti un alt eu - O catedrală a corpului/You Are Another Me-A Cathedral of the Body, curated by Cosmin Costinaş and Viktor Neumann, was described as “a new phase in the research project on intimacy and corporality, in several languages and artistic disciplines, initiated by Adina Pintilie in 2010 and manifested previously in cinema with the 2018 feature Touch Me Not.” 

The project consists of a nine-channel video installation built around the artist’s community of collaborators, coming from various countries, generations, and environments: performers Hermann Müller and Dirk Lange, active in promoting the rights of people with disabilities, actress and acting teacher Laura Benson, transgender activist Hanna Hofmann, joined by Adina Pintilie. The protagonists “explore intimacy together, and connect to one another through conversation, care, dance or touch.”

The artist has reimagined Romania’s “history-heavy pavilion as a contemporary ‘cathedral,’ encouraging the openness towards various experiences of corporality and different visions on the world.”

The VR installation was developed in collaboration with the VR design team of Augmented Space Agency (Ciprian Făcăeru, Sabin Șerban and Dan Făcăeru) and the project’s academic partner, I.L. Caragiale Theater and Film University.

(Opening photo: Martin Backhaus, courtesy of Manekino Cultural Association)

simona@romania-insider.com