My treasure, your treasure, their treasure

The artist Dóczy Berde Amál had a memory notebook that she kept with great care. On its pages are stuck pieces cut from the material of the clothes worn by her or by those close to her at important points in her life. Beside them can be read short descriptions in which she recorded for posterity the occasion on which they were worn (her first ball, the trip to Paris, her wedding, etc.), the date of their purchase, or the name of the dressmaker who made the garment.

It is fascinating that rather than resorting to painting, her usual medium of artistic expression, the 51-year-old artist instead chose ready made visual and tactile materials to capture, in a time capsule, events from her long-distant childhood and youth. The life given immortality via these scraps of cloth strikes us as colourful, dynamic and vital.

The fact that this notebook is still in existence is due both to its author, who kept it for 39 years, and to Erzsébet Gergely, who in her turn has had it in safe keeping for 48 years. Our exhibition marks the first time it has been displayed in public.

It opens up to us an extraordinarily rich variety of early 20th century textile materials which we frequently know only from black-and-white photographs. The notebook is without doubt also a rich source for cultural history, yet this is not the aspect that attracted us the most. Leafing through the notebook while reflecting on the way it has survived inspired us to focus our attention on the making of collections as a means of saving.

We showed the notebook to, and discussed it with, women artists whose practice is distinguished by the fact that they are also collectors. These discussions helped us to refine more and more clearly a conception in which the making of collections means preserving, protecting, and looking after.

The works contributed by the women artists invited to exhibit have convinced us that this kind of preserving by collecting makes no claim to official recognition by any institution and does not ground its validity on any academic thesis. It is a softer structure than soft power and does not aspire to power. It is bold in its subjectivity and does not requuire large sums of money (or sometimes any financial resources at all), and, that being so, it is not concerned with the financial fortunes of the things collected either. On occasion it operates at the interface between private and public, objective and feelings-based. It is inclusive and reads objects outside the viewpoints of the disciplines. It can be compulsive, even to the point of absurdity, yet, again, purely from a desire to save, not to acquire.

Ana Avram’s installations confront us with unexpected combinations that are Dadaist and surreal in nature, but that have a deep personal motivation. One of her most radical acts, both of collecting and of creating a sculpture, consists of collecting fluff off the seats in the House of King Mathias. This painstaking and seemingly pointless task brings together signs of civilisation and living, which would find a rightful place in any Museum of Mankind.

Roberta Curcă carries out her cataloguing work with a desire for complete comprehensiveness, by archiving both physically and via drawings the tiles found on buildings in the public space. Such tiles, besides the beauty and value inherent in their shape and reflective glaze, are expressions of the main currents in urban modernism and of their derivatives in vernacular architecture. Their disappearance, as old buildings are renovated or demolished, takes with it hundreds of ways of making the public space more pleasant, hundreds of modalities of private self-representation.

The exhibition title paraphrases the title of the work shown by Chilf Mária). My treasure, your treasure, her/his treasure l(2006) is a collection of wallets found or put together by the artist. Wallets are par excellence items that lie on the boundary between public and private, since they hold some valuables (money and documents) that have value in the public domain and others (photographs of those dear to us) that are normally relevant only for those who are keeping them.

Thea Lazăr is attracted by the botanical realm and studies the way in which plant collecting expresses people’s relationship with the world. In the installation shown here, the positivist identification and systematising of flora in botanical display cases is thrown into confusion and the making of collections of dried plants emerges as a means of expression that is subjective and even romantic.

The Tristoizi [Sad-oids] installation of drawings and found objects by Lea Rasovszky is a profoundly nostalgic work. Rasovszky is drawn to the marginal aesthetic of the Communist period and finds inspiration in the cartoon strips found in play areas and doctors’ surgeries, which made a powerful impression on her at both an emotional and an artistic level. She sees, in the images she has found and created, adult versions of the joyfulness of childhood.

Székely Sebestyén

Ana Avram (b. 1999) is living and working in Cluj-Napoca. Through her artistic practice she proposes the negotiation of reality, in spatial contexts, through installations and sculptures situated on the border between materiality and meta-reality. She gravitates towards strange juxtapositions of familiar objects and elements, which represent the product of mediating internal scenographies, within the limits imposed by physicality. Ana strongly believes in intuitive creation and research, which are delivered from a subconscious cumulus – the creative process being a sincere attempt to bring to the surface and clarify.

Chilf Mária (b. 1966)lives and works in Budapest. She holds a DLA from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, where she is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Painting Faculty. Chilf’s interdisciplinary practice spans painting, installation, and intermedia, often exploring themes of memory, identity, and temporality through the use of layering, abstraction, and the juxtaposition of organic and geometric forms. Her work frequently engages with tactile materials and visual fragments, creating complex, multi-dimensional narratives that invite contemplation of both personal and collective histories. Chilf’s international experience, including time at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, has informed her unique approach to materiality and space. Her work has been exhibited and collected globally, with notable collections including those of Museu de Arte de Brasília, Frauenmuseum in Bonn, and Ludwig Museum in Budapest. Chilf has received multiple awards, including the Munkácsy Mihály Award (2005), and various Hungarian and international grants, underscoring her influence in contemporary art.

Roberta Curcă (b. 1991) is a Bucharest-based artist working with drawing, various types of photography, objects, and artist books. In her work, she carries out systematic investigations into different kinds of structures, objects, and the visuality of objects, often displaying her findings in the form of archives, technical drawings, notes, swatches, or other media that can be used to organize and showcase information. She frequently explores the dynamic between the rational and the arbitrary, two- and three-dimensional states, intent and impact, and the human and the non-human. She has a BA and MA in Drawing from the National University of Arts, Bucharest and has done research in cultural studies at CESI – Center of Excellence in Image Studies. Her work has been shown at Zina Gallery and MATCA art space in Cluj-Napoca, Accademia di Romania in Rome, GAEP Galley, Ivan Gallery and Atelier 35 in Bucharest, Kunsthalle Bega and the 2022 Beta Architecture Biennial in Timișoara.

Dóczy Berde Amál (1886–1976) studied at the Debsitz Private School in Munich and from 1914 at the Art School in Baia Mare under János Thorma. In addition to her own artistic activities she also taught art at the well-known college in Aiud, where her pupils included Barcsay Jenő and Incze János. She settled in Cluj In 1930. Berde was influenced by the landscapes around Aiud, where the plain and the mountains meet in a dramatic way. She was also attracted by the richness of the Transylvanian folk culture, particularly by the chromatic splendour of the garments.

She was one of the greatest connoisseurs of the folk art of the Rimetea and Călata regions, and the folklore of these landscapes formed the subject of many of her compositions, landscapes, and documentary watercolours and was captured in her expert writings.

While at certain moments her painting rises to high levels of modern expressionist power and abstraction, she nevertheless constantly and with great colourist passion expressed her loyalty to visible reality.

Thea Lazăr (b. 1993) lives and works between Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and the Internet. Her specific interest is neither in the past nor in the future but in the way they affect our contemporary culture and how they come together to create a narrative in the present. Nature is, more often than not, an integral part of her work. Either by using live plants or by artificially or digitally recreating natural elements, she explores the human need to connect with our nature and environment. In The Forest of Ghost Orchids, the dangling orchids remind us of the delicacy and ephemerality of an endangered flora in the midst of an ecological crisis.

Since 2016 she has been a member of Aici Acolo, an artist-run project focusing on promoting young and emerging artists by organizing contemporary art exhibitions in unused or abandoned spaces in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Lea Rasovszky (b. 1986) lives and works in Bucharest. She graduated from the National University of Art, Bucharest, Department of Photography and Video, in 2008 and followed this up with an MA (awarded 2010) at the same university and department. In 2018 she embarked on doctoral studies at the Art History and Theory Department of the same university. Her projects highlight the stereotypes and values of society, towards which she takes a critical view. Everything is filtered through a rough and ironic style of drawing, often combined with immersive installations that rely on the viewer for the completion of the context.

In 2016, she co-founded the Maatka Phi Association, which aims to become involved in social, educational, and art activities. In 2020, she co-founded the Atelierele Malmaison, an initiative that subsidises affordable spaces for the local artistic community and also functions as a meeting place for diverse creative entities.

Acknowledgements:

Gergely Erzsébet

Székely National Museum, Sfântu Gheorghe

Project assistant: Xenia Tinca

Gallery team: Andreea Cărăușu, Andrei-David Petre, Vécsei Hunor