Images of the Good Life in the East
2024
In September 2024, I had the privilege of joining the “Images of the Good Life in the East” project in Chișinău, organized by tranzit.ro/Bucharest and curated by Adelina Luft, Nora Dorogan, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, and Raluca Voinea.
This exhibition and forum brought together artists from Moldova, Ukraine, and participants from the independent course “Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life,” exploring visions of a better, more sustainable life in the region amid current challenges.
I created a series of 20 mixed-media A3 illustrations under the leitmotif of “Harvest.” Drawn live during the 20-day program, these works capture the atmosphere of exhibitions, discussions, and shared moments under autumn rain – scenes of gathering, reflection, and hope.
The illustrations serve multiple purposes: they visually support and enrich the project's texts and documentation, while also functioning as evocative posters distributed to participants as meaningful reminders of the values explored – solidarity, imagination, and alternative futures.
A selection of these illustrations is presented here, offering a glimpse into the project's vibrant energy and my personal response to it.
“The words image, good life, and East from the title of the project are also provocations to think outside preconceived frameworks. The challenge to think of the image verbally, as an action in time, rather than a surface within a space. To crack into the depth of reality beyond practices that produce images as style, reflections of a given reality, or reducing depth to a surface. The challenge to situate one’s own life in the midst of a dynamic reality, ongoing transformations, and to shape the symbols of such complex shifts. To work critically in order to cultivate a good life based on ethical relations with the world around and on the acknowledgement of small and large issues. The challenge to rethink the East and its zones of correlation, creation and reinvention, despide dislocation, uprooting and devaluation.”
https://ro.tranzit.org/en/exhibition/0/2024-09-14/images-of-the-good-life-in-the-east
In alignment with the project's core provocation—to reclaim the power of symbolization in Eastern Europe amid devaluation, war proximity, and ecological threats—my 'Harvest' series proposes images of abundance, care, and renewal drawn directly from lived moments, offering a grounded Eastern response to global calls for alternative wellbeing
