Arts Lab 3.0 Exhibition Catalog: Beautiful & Fair Town

BEAUTIFUL FAIR TOWN ART EXHIBITION

ARTS LAB 3.0 • ASIRYS

BEAUTIFUL FAIR TOWN

ART EXHIBITION

OCTOBER 2021, TÂRGU FRUMOS, ACT HOUSE

AS PART OF THE ARTS LAB 3.0 PROGRAM ASIRYS

BEAUTIFUL FAIR TOWN

ARTISTS DEMET DURDU CERAMIC AND GLASS ARTIST, TURKEY PAGES (4-8)

FIONA O'NEILL TEXTILE ARTIST, IRELAND PAGES (9-10)

KRISTA LIPSKA BODYPAINTER, LATVIA PAGES (11-13)

KUBRA AKARSU ARCHITECT, TURKEY PAGES (14-17)

LEIRE SÁENZ QUEVEDO MEDIA ARTIST, BASQUE COUNTRY PAGES (18-23)

DEMET DURDU CERAMIST AND GLASS ARTIST, TURKEY I am a ceramic and glass artist. Dealing with mud and glass allows me to embark on my inner journey.

I am completely alone with myself and I use two wonderful materials, glass and ceramics, to express my interior world.

For Beautiful Fair Town exhibition, I got inspired by the Cucuteni patterns. You can see my minimal form works that I made with the sgrafitto technique.

But beside the arts works, Târgu Frumos inspired me, I promote collaborative work that worth your hand.

Ceramic is a part of Târgu Frumos cultural heritage.

Silence

I woke up in a cold, sunny autumn morning in Târgu Frumos. I felt silence inside me, I could listen the peace. Here I am in a context where I can explore a purely inner journey.

In this silence, I can hear the birds better. I can watch the perfection of the leaves in their natural cycle in autumn. I started to feel everything more deeply.

Sometimes I get lost in my thoughts, sometimes I can say, yes, I am right here. I feel the beauty of this town, I watch, I listen.

Sometimes I watch people pass in horsedrawn carriages. I see their smiles, their faces. I witness how peaceful they seem in the difficult life they are struggling with.

Sometimes I sit on a bench in the street and listen to the town ambiance.

I do this from time to time because, with the intensity of life, there are things that we overlook and don't realize.

Watching the environment with an outside eye makes me feel alive.

FIONA O'NEILL TEXTILE ARTIST, IRELAND Fiona is a textiles artist and activist from Dublin, Ireland. After finishing her studies at NCAD in Fine Art Textiles, she spent three years in Greece working with displaced communities in refugee camps.

A large part of her work is informed by the interconnected history of textile techniques and the fight for women’s rights; before women had a voice in the political sphere they used ‘domestic art’ as a covert form of protest.

Hundreds of years later, Ní Neil carries on that tradition.

Perspective "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." What appeals to one might not appeal to the other. How does our location impact our perspective and what can we learn from the perspective of Târgu Frumos?

Dress tells us so much about a country’s history - what values they held, what techniques they mastered, how they structured society.

KRISTA LIPSKA BODYPAINTER, LATVIA My passion is playing with colors on people skin. That was the reason why I decided to turn that into profession.

Recently I finished my studies as makeup artist, but I also studied culture management and theater arts.

I do really enjoy making creative and fantasy makeup.

I am willing to share my knowledge about expressing personality, feelings through working with colors on skin, as well the technics how to handle and bring to life that.

Lessons

When I arrived in Târgu Frumos, every day was bringing me new opportunities to discover the beauty in small things. I have kept an open heart and explored the culture, traditions and people around me. Everything happening was unknown, so many doors for me to open and explore and I am glad that I did.

Day by day more of the local beauty was revealing itself from unexpected places which is why as soon as I heard the name of the exhibition ”Beautiful Fair”, I knew exactly what my contribution for this should be.

Here I am in rural Romania, embellished by nature, enlightened, and inspired by the local people. This was the main source of inspiration that drove me to create and give life to my art piece dedicated to my experience here in Târgu Frumos.

And so I believe I have identified this simple local recipe which people follow as they get on with their lives; work hard, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty, fulfill your responsibilities, take your life as it is with an open heart, and let yourself bloom from within the place where you have chosen to plant yourself.

KÜBRA AKARSU ARCHITECT, TURKEY I am an interior architect and graphic designer.

I love to create, to meet new people and discover cultures.

Thanks to the school education and private courses I attended, I managed to develop good skills in design. I can achieve anything within the limits of my imagination and I do my best to enlarge these limits.

I like to produce a structure and furniture by abstracting from every material.

Architecture made me realize that unlike technical details, each item is actually an art and has a flawless design.

While I was doing my research before coming here, when I saw the photo of the house where I was going to stay, I felt that this town was really special.

I was living a city life, in Istanbul, and Târgu Frumos is a whole different world for me. Green, no big buildings blocking the sky, gardens full of flowers, and kind people.

Enigmatic

I am an architect. Details, buildings, structures are a part of me. The churches here give the town a different atmosphere as if it came out of a fairy tale. All the roof details, the carefully made visuals around its exterior, the sound of the bell, its enigmatic appearance make me stare at them for minutes and notice a different detail every time.

Drawing all the domes and details made me connect with the most important architectural heritage of Târgu Frumos.

LEIRE SÁENZ QUEVEDO MEDIA ARTIST, BASQUE COUNTRY I studied film-making and photography because I wanted to be able to tell stories through image and sound and to make people feel the way I felt while watching films and TV shows while growing up.

After finishing my degree on image and sound, I realized I had quite good technical skills, but not a great artistic point of view, that’s why I decided to start studying Fine Arts at the University.

I love drawing, painting, and paying

Abuztua

attention to my surroundings. I find interest in the everyday life and I try to capture it trogh my art.

Ekaina

Uztaila

Segundoak

Combining one second long clips recorded every day of my stay in Târgu Frumos, this project has given me the chance to explore and compilate moments, gestures and people that are part of the everyday life of this place and its surroundings. This piece creates an archive of what happens and what I (conditioned by personal circumstances) decide to observe and capture. Each day I have lived here is represented by a second.

Berdea

These three pieces assemble what Târgu Frumos means to me. On the one hand, the everyday life and the routine, the people and their habits, the movement in the middle of tranquility. On the other hand, the personal experiences this place offers me to have; the places and the people I am getting to know, including myself. To end with, this town has emerged as an artistic growth and exploration experience for me.

BEAUTIFUL FAIR TOWN ART EXHIBITION

DEMET DURDU CERAMIST AND GLASS ARTIST, TURKEY

FIONA O'NEILL TEXTILE ARTIST, IRELAND

KRISTA LIPSKA BODYPAINTER, LATVIA

KÜBRA AKARSU ARCHITECT, TURKEY

LEIRE SÁENZ QUEVEDO MEDIA ARTIST, BASQUE COUNTRY

ARTS LAB 3.0 • ASIRYS The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.