GENDER AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN ROMANIAN ART BEFORE AND AFTER 1990
GENDER AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN ROMANIAN ART BEFORE AND AFTER 1990

Summary/Abstract: How the relationship with the environment constituted an issue in Romanian contemporary art approached by women and male artists before 1990 is relevant for the analysis of the consequences on the process of awareness towards the possibilities of an eco-feminist practice and theory in post-communism. The cases of women artists like Ana Lupaş and Wanda Mihuleac, two leading artists who influenced a generation, illustrate an interest towards environmental aspects, but how their works functioned in the context of a reality marked by ideologies, reality in which most of the artists who engaged in alternative works to the official art withdrew in their studios or private houses, is to be questioned. If we find some traces of land art and environmental topics before 1990 in Romania, the contemporary situation in the last decades, with a few exceptions that are to be discussed, seems to be reflecting a void. How can this absence be explained in contemporary art and theory taking into account socio-political as well as aesthetic and conceptual aspects? What was the motor of working with the environment during the communist regime in the case of a few women artists but also in the case of male artists and mixed artists groups, and what is missing today for an artistic mobilization towards an environmental dimension? And last, but not least, if feminist art is more and more penetrating the field of art practice and theory in Romania what could explain the minor interest for an environmental agenda in the context of a so-called globalized world that is facing an imperative need to face global warming, climate changes, water and food sustainability or the ethics of consumption?

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