04 Jul 2009

Mucsarnok presents Lia Perjovschi - Interval: Plan (for Knowledge Museum)

INTERVAL: Plan (for Knowledge Museum)
Lia Perjovschi

The belief in ideals, in the realization of dreams, as well as in the function of art in increasing knowledge, is one of the most important characteristics of Lia Perjovschi's artistic practice. With the Plan for a Museum of Knowledge, she proposes an imaginary museum, which is based on the metaphors of the Body, the Earth and the Universe. The Museum of Knowledge is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach, the positioning of art within a changing system of relations. The museum as an open-structure archive shifts the focus from the spectacle to the learning process. More than an idea, the plan in the title seeks to emancipate the viewer, and is to be looked on as a conscientious vision.

The installation, which comprises drawings, objects, charts, photos and colour prints, is an objectification of the mass of information the artist has acquired through reading, travelling and creative work. The 'mental map' thus created offers a view into those processes of selection that define the artist's attitude towards the world, her methods of associating things, of building her own understanding of the world.

For Lia Perjovschi, collecting and structuring information are both a need and a mission. By satisfying her passion for collection, the artist partly wants to compensate herself for all she could not access before 1989. At the same time, a critical approach to information, its classification according to her own perspectives and criteria, make for a self-development activity, which helps her to orient herself in the chaotic mass of information that inundated Romania after the revolution. Significantly, the Museum of Knowledge and the other projects based on the collection of information have an emancipating quality. In the artist's constructions of social and art history, as well as in her interpretation of the world, the free and conscientious opinion of the individual (the artist, the woman, the East-European citizen, the conscientious consumer) is voiced, as an alternative to discourses generated from authoritative positions.

Lia Perjovschi

Born in Sibiu, Romania in 1961. She lives and works in Bucharest.
She started her career with drawings and performances. Her activity as a collector and operator of the CAA / CCAA (Contemporary Art Archive / Contemporary Centre for Art Analysis) is informed by a sense of social responsibility and commitment to independent thought, the need to create contexts and to reassess history. Recent individual shows: Statement, Pavilion Unicredit, Bucuresti (2009), Lia Perjovschi: performances 1987 – 2007, Wilkinson Gallery, London (2008), States of Mind, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University (2007), Kunstraum Innsbruck Projectroom (2006), Endless Collection, Goppingen Kunstverein (2003). Group shows: A.C.A.D.E.M.Y, MuhKA Antwerpen, (2006), Again for Tomorrow at Royal College of Art London (2006), Interrupted Histories, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana (2006), On Difference, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2005).

Cooperating partner: Hungarian Institute for Educational Research and Development

Supporters: Romanian Cultural Institute Budapest, Ministry of Education and Culture, National Cultural Fund, MKI Plexi Kft.