Intro

IEEB (International Experimental Engraving Biennial) in Bucharest is focused on various aspects of printmaking seen as a contemporary art medium with a broad technical and visual offer, going beyond its traditional approach. IEEB encourages experiment, challenging conventional perceptions, re-defining and re-contextualizing engraving techniques as powerful tools of representation in contemporary art. IEEB functions as a counter-space for discussing the role of printmaking in contemporary art, not as a separate chapter but as a statement of inclusion. The art of print in our view is seen as a combination between technique and concept as well as an intersectional and transversal medium of expression, combining traditional techniques with performance, video art, sculpture and object.

IEEB7 will focus on our recent history with local as well as global reference constructing a counter-space for understanding/questioning/revealing/identifying/imagining the way history has been or it is being written. Approaching the relationship between fiction and historiography Linda Hutcheon observes the issue of source authority, the unstable notions of construction, reception, distribution: fiction and historiography are simultaneously used and abused, installed and turned upside down, affirmed and denied.

Written and oral history, historical files, archives can be created or interpreted and manipulated. From schoolbooks, television broadcast and tabloids, from academic publications to satires and wikileaks, from secret services files to archives, and last but not least from art criticism to history and theory of art, this project aims to question mechanisms of writing and fabricating histories and their impact on personal and collective memory.

IEEB7 will create a platform for contemporary art production through the use of print techniques and concepts with the purpose of reflecting on the factual/truth (writing/telling) and fictional dimensions of our recent histories.

Period: 25.10.2016 – 25.02.2017

The list of participating artists:

Ana Adamović (SRB)
Ana Golici (USA/RO)
Ana Hoffner (AT)
Cătălin Burcea (RO)
Christine Niehoff (DE)
Corina Ilea (CAN/RO)
Dylan McMannus (US)
Elana Katz (DE)
Judith Saupper (AT)
Mihai Zgondoiu (RO)
Olivia Mihălțianu (RO)
Sandra Sterle (HR)
Silvia Trăistaru (RO)
Sorin Oncu (RO/SRB)
Zsolt Asztalos (HUN)

IEEB7 Sponsors: ERSTE – Asset Management, Sâmburești

Partners: Goethe Institute, Austrian Cultural Forum, Balassi Institute – Hungarian Institute from Bucharest, Victoria Art Centre, National Museum of Natural History Grigore Antipa, Alert Studio, The Institute of Art History G. Opescu of the Romanian Academy, WASP-Working Art Space and Production,  For Culture, Cărturești, Aiurart Contemporary Art Space in Bucharest, Atelier 030202