IAGA Contemporary Art is glad to present to the public the second solo exhibition signed by the Romanian artist Oana Maria Pop (b. 1989, in Cluj-Napoca), with the title Small details, not important.

Oana Maria Pop’s project presented on this occasion, focuses on the violence and discrimination suffered by women in Romania. There are several episodes that show how these practices are considered “normal” and are underestimated or even covered up. The artist has chosen to take inspiration from four stories that have particularly impressed her to bring the audience to reflect on the role and treatment given to women. They are gloomy, violent and cruel stories, but they are not only “stories”, they are real facts and data collected by associations and competent NGOs that highlight a current emergency. Barracks, hospitals, courts, schools. Places where you should feel safe and instead close your doors, becoming accomplices of the crime. These incidents are not isolated cases but “normalized” abuses within the Romanian public institutions which, according to recent events and data, are more current than one might believe.

From the stories reported it is clear that the institutions consider women as flesh, nothing else, formless flesh like the one depicted in his works, are strips of dismembered and stitched skin, made even more alive and real by the use of silicone. In fact, all the works on canvas show details of the female body, whose lines are barely hinted at and recognizable because the subjects come from photographs taken by the artist and manipulated with Photoshop to create abstractions, similar to cubist compositions, who represent women in an evanescent, indeterminate way, as they are seen by the eyes of a corrupt and sexist government and society.
The Polaroid series consists of images of women holding a pink silicone blanket, stereotypical color of girls, which reminds the skin to indicate the exposure and vulnerability of abused women who try to hide from the looks of others. The object represents the feeling that many women feel when, for example, they get catcalling or groping on the street: they are dressed but still feel and are being targeted as if they were naked. Dressed in what society expects of them, they remain prisoners of those standards, like the pink color, to which they are bound.

Curated by Camilla Remondina

An exhibition realized by IAGA Contemporary Art

Exhibition venue
IAGA Contemporary Art, Strada Cloşca 9-11, Cluj-Napoca, RO

Visiting hours
Tuesday –Saturday 2:00-6:00 pm, and by appointment

Period
October 24 – November 18, 2023

Opening
Tuesday October 24th, 2023, at 6:00 pm

PRESS RELEASE

Grey detail
2023, oil and silicone on canvas, 100×100 cm