Andreea Dobrin: “Țică! Ceaușescu has fallen!”

On August 23rd, NAG Pop Up Gallery debuted “25 Years After”, a project curated by Ioana Ciocan, architect Attila Kim, with Andreea Dobrin’s exhibition “Țică! Ceaușescu has fallen!”, open to the public until September 21st, 2014, at Magheru One, 7th floor, 1 Gen. Gheorghe Magheru Blvd., Bucharest (Exhibition opening hours: THU – SUN, 11 am – 7 pm).

About the exhibition

The first solo show of Andreea Dobrin, a 2014 graduate of the National Arts University Bucharest, Graphics Department, is a very personal approach, a memories based storytelling rather than a documentary about how the fall of the communist regime was perceived by her grandparents, living at that time in the countryside, far from the urban areas.

The title of the exhibition actually represents the words of her grandmother addressed to her grandfather, a shepherd, when hearing the news on TV.

The starting point of her current show was her graduation exhibition, when she gathered all these memories in a book with the same title and created an animation, a replica of the TV news at the moment of Ceaușescu’s final speech. The show now adds her childhood paintings before and immediately after the 1989 events, the photos of her grandmother, wired installations with texts bringing back the thoughts and feelings of that period, audio installations with songs by her grandmother, and interviews of her grandmother with an etnographer.

Although very personal, the exhibition manages to revive the collective perceptions of past events that are still very present today in Romanian culture.

About the project

“25 Years After”, curated by Ioana Ciocan, proposes in the NAG Pop Up Gallery space a marking of the 25 years post December 89. Young artists, born before 1989 and raised after 1989, will be invited to exhibit and perform in the gallery space, offering new perspectives on the 25 years period: “lost places memory; memory of a recounted Revolution, rather than an experienced Revolution; communist vs. capitalist identity; ‘perfect communist moments’ memory and unrealized five year plans utopias”.

The project will continue in October-November 2014, with Gabriela Mateescu & Marina Oprea’s performance on the Romanian education system, as well as Radu Mocanu’s exhibition “Golden Black”.

The project is hosted by Magheru One – a symbolic building of inter-bellum Romania architecture, built in 1936-37, architects Rudolf Fraenkel and Eugen Shimsy, the first being the architect of Scala building, located in front of Magheru One.