The Art Newspaper

Iron Curtain project unites European artists from East and West

Romanian artist Stefan Constantinescu has invited a roster of European artists to create a collective work about the Cold War

By Richard Unwin. Web only
Published online: 22 July 2010

Stefan Constantinescu

bucharest. Setting out on an ambitious new project, Romanian artist Stefan Constantinescu has invited an impressive list of European artists to participate in a collective work that will re-interpret memories of the Cold War. The centerpiece of “Behind the Iron Curtain” will be an “interactive memory box”, with Constantinescu and seven other artists each creating an object for inclusion.

Explaining his inspiration, Constantinescu said, “This project began to take shape first and foremost from a desire to tell my own experience of certain events that shaped the history of the Iron Curtain. As important, though, for the inception of this idea is a suspicion I always had towards the so-called official history. I grew up and was educated in a culture that transformed history according to the precepts of totalitarian ideology. Consequently, the purpose of this project is not to find or say the absolute truth, but rather to offer a different representational model for a recent past.”

“Behind the Iron Curtain” will bring together artists who grew up on either side of the line that once divided Europe, with Poland’s Zuzanna Janin, Hungary’s Peter Forgas, Switzerland’s Yvez Netzamer and Italy’s Liliana Moro already confirming their participation. Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Janin said, “ I am really happy to be invited by Stefan, who’s work I really appreciate! At this stage, it’s difficult to say what my contribution will be. I am still thinking how to make it, in which way my memory can be present. A part of it will surely be based on my youth when I spent almost all my free time in the cinema in Warsaw. And I am thinking to make a work referring personal history to movies like Death in Venice, Doctor Zhivago, Austeria, Stalker, Men of Iron and Last Tango in Paris.”



The London based graphic design group Abake, who have previously worked with bands such as Air and Daft Punk, will work with the artists to fit their objects into the final memory box. With funding secured from the Romanian Ministry of Culture and the European Union Culture Program, Constantinescu hopes to complete the project by mid-2011. Exhibitions will be held at institutions across the artists’ home countries, with multiple copies of the memory box available for public interaction. A documentary film, featuring interviews with the artists, will also be shown.