Wings
2005
wood and metal, 200 x 90 x 7 cm
Location: Command Garrison

This large-scale wooden sculpture depicting two wings, is one of the most widely known works by the artist Ionela Mihaela Cîmpeanu. The artist juxtaposes two popular meanings attributed to wings—they are a symbol of both freedom, and of protection. Cîmpeanu supports people who are excluded, and deprived of wings, or whose damaged wings do not allow them to fly and soar above the world’s troubles. Her people are the Roma, who are still the target of cruelty and discrimination in our society. Cimpeanu offers these huge and heavy wings to her community to give her people the opportunity to take shelter or to fly. Unfortunately, both seeking protection and flight are escapist gestures unable to erase the suffering of those forced to seek refuge or escape. This is stressed by the use of steel, a heavy metal covering the top of the wings, grounding the sculpture and preventing those seeking refuge from leaving the earth and the troubled reality surrounding them.

Waiting
2005
Plaster
20 x 26 x 30 cm
Location: Command Garrison

This plaster sculpture depicts two female feet planted firmly in the ground. Typically for Mihaela Cîmpeanu, this reflects the limited capacity of women in our society to fully own their path and make independent decisions. The artist is especially critical of the double discrimination experienced by women from a minority background, and Roma women in particular. The foot is a powerful symbol of agency because every action must be initiated by taking the first step. However, even though women have control of the mechanical functions of their bodies, the external context - patriarchal society, anti-Gypsyism in the Roma case, traditional gender roles - might have a paralysing effect on progress. Too many women are still rendered immobile by the external oppressive system. They must wait rather than enjoy the freedom to make the first move and act.

The sleep (the unconscious memory of the Holocaust)
2017
plaster and metal
20 x 26 x 30 cm
Location: Command Garrison

“The work contrasts two materials - plaster and barbed wire - to raise the topic of multi-generational trauma related to the experience of the Roma Holocaust of the 1940s. A piece of heavy and sharp wire lying on a soft and fluffy pillow evokes the internal scar caused by the genocide. During the Roma Holocaust, at least 500,000 Roma men, women, and children were massacred, with some countries annihilating as many as 90% of their Roma population. This past experience was made even more painful because, for decades, it was “the forgotten Holocaust” – unrecognised, invisible and unreconciled. The Roma Holocaust continues to shape the Roma transnational collective identity, and its consequences are still present today. The memory of the Holocaust is an anchor to the painful past of the Roma – but our survival is the binding force of Roma communities today. The scars become part of our legacy, which helps us celebrate the resilience, resistance, and power represented by our existence,” Ionela Mihaela Cîmpeanu.

Silence/The mute cry
2020
Plaster
30 x 45 x 30 cm
Location: Command Garrison

This is a plaster sculpture depicting a woman’s head stuck in a block covering the lower

part of her face. The eyes of the woman are closed, and the block covering her mouth prevents her from speaking. This work is the artist’s reflection on the Roma culture, which invalidates female subjectivity. The work is a subtle yet subversive critique of patriarchal domination, rendering women's position as voiceless objects rather than vocal subjects. In the artist’s words, this sculpture reflects women who suffer in silence. The face of the woman depicted seems serene and resigned rather than angry. She is a silent sentinel of her own or collective female suffering. The speaking position is a place of power in the patriarchal society, and women are traditionally denied the right to speak. In the case of Roma women, the intersection of racist exclusion and patriarchal discrimination often stops women from claiming their voice and right to speak.

Bio
Mihaela Ionela Cimpeanu was born in Bailesti, southeastern Romania, into a family of young Roma. Her father came from a family of brick-makers and became a construction worker. Her mother was unemployed. She is the oldest of five children. When she was one, the family moved to the nearby city of Craiova. She attended middle school and then high school, where she discovered her gift for drawing. She was then admitted to the High School of Arts and graduated with the highest grades. After graduation in 1999, she attended a public administration course. In 2000, she moved to Bucharest, where she participated in a journalism course and specialised in press photography. She later worked at a newspaper in Bucharest, Curierul National, and as a painter at the Buftea Movie Studios. She graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture at the National Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, Bucharest. Her works were featured in the First Roma Pavilion exhibition Paradise Lost, curated by Timea Junghaus for the 52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia in 2007.

RomaMoMA
RomaMoMA is a joint initiative of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) and OFF-Biennale Budapest. RomaMoMA is a contemporary art project initiating a forum for collaborative reflection on a future Roma Museum of Contemporary Art, with the involvement of local and international Roma and non-Roma artists, cultural experts, social scientists, and the civil sphere.

In the form of a contemporary art project involving stakeholder communities and exploiting the possibilities of collective thinking and discourse, as well as the critical and discursive potentials of modern art, it – prefiguratively – “creates” itself. It is an imagined and natural space home to both Roma arts and artists.

Rather than the realisation of a specific museum concept, the project connects a range of programs (exhibitions, film screenings, performances, workshops, etc.), modelling nomadic, flexible institutional operation, which raises questions about the devices of contemporary art.