Welcome to Baraka
I’ve spent a summer afternoon with a renegade artist entity. Its rise to notoriety came in September, after its first public exhibition. Now it’s time to unveil the lab where it all started.
Welcome to Baraka, an old abandoned building turned into an artist-run space, founded by four students, at that time. While wandering around in the alleys of Timișoara, after getting rejected for a short period of time from FAD (The West University’s arts and design faculty), the lads finally found a place where their works belongs. More so, the individuals fused conceptually not just as a group, but also with their space.
Mihai, Paul, David and Adi have a distinguished relation to art. When I went there, I felt that in front of me were not some posers that just wanted to finish an arts school because it was the cool thing to do. Quite the opposite. I met the guys in March 2017 during a winter camp. They invited me to their crib. Needless to say, the visit was worth it.
Their story with Baraka started nearly four years ago. In Romanian, “baracă” means “hovel”. They were looking for a place where they can practice their art, any place with a roof on top. The abandoned building, which they stayed in illegally for some time, was not at its best shape during the start. Nevertheless, they managed to clean around and do some fixings.
When visiting, they take you on a tour and explain to you some of their installations, paintings and sculptures. Unlike the majority of other artists, they encourage you to touch and interact with the artwork. They want you to understand it by any means possible. “Questions are always welcome”, says Mihai.
During my stay, Paul plays some tunes on a Spanish guitar. His main signature in his pieces is the human ear. He’s fascinated by it and can’t help but make sculptures of it, or at least focus quite heavily on this anatomical part in his paintings. Nevertheless, he’s playing noticeably out of tune and off scale. “I just play what I feel”, replied Paul dismissively.
Adi is also musically oriented; he manipulates the sound waves through an amplifier, in order to generate different shapes on light materials kept in a transparent box. The bass frequencies blow up hair, shredded tape from audio cassettes and fly wings that he collected with a lot of patience. The process was highly time consuming, yet rewarding in the end, for that was the day his masterpiece was born.
David is also into sculpture. He uses fleece, mostly to shape the human figure. The faceless figure of his father while laying on his deathbed was what he presented as his graduation project. Nevertheless, his carving technique is on par with his painting skills. Not to forget that he was Paul’s teacher as well, when the latter started playing the guitar.
Mihai is most of the philosophical one in the group. One of his series of paintings is by using fire. One day, as he was working on it, he decided to take it and hang it somewhere. While dancing blind folded with a knife, he made cuts and holes in it. It was exactly what he needed, for he was expressing the feelings he was going through at that time.
Baraka started as a place where they stay despite the difficult conditions, but Mihai tells me it’s a part of the journey they have to take. This past winter they stayed in a tiny room in Baraka and generated heat from an old heater that functions using wood.
“I told the guys this is not easy and I know it, but these difficult times should be a part of us, we’ll learn from them. The struggle is a part of our evolution and development. If someone was to come here and offers a big space, tools, materials and everything, then it would kill the creativity”, said Mihai.
It has now grown to be a collective effort. It’s a conflation of works, both finished or in progress, in which egos die in order to give birth to the higher, meta-human self.
During the tour, you are introduced to their art series, which range from comedic ones to serious ones. There’s the mocking the big names series, painting with fire series, sculpture preserved in resin and plenty more.
“While working as a waiter, sixteen hours per day, I had numerous conversations with many people and told them about myself and my art. People were supportive and, when talking with artist customers, we’d always swap ideas in minutes that seemed endless”, confesses Mihai.
He adds that “I had to find a source of motivation and for me interacting with people was that motivation, especially when I felt their empathy. For instance while having a conversation with some customers they asked where I am from and when they came to find out it was Romania, they were more than surprised that I spoke good English. ‘Do they teach you English in schools?’ they asked, and I said ‘Yes of course, but it’s just by books’.”
“To learn a language thoroughly, you have to be there with the people and get to know the culture and everything. It’s not only the books”, concludes the artist.
All four can’t emphasize enough on how art is subjective and how they had difficult times with their instructors. Let’s just agree that the use of bad words is quite common in their artwork, which didn’t help their schooling path. “Who do you guys think you are?”, “Play by the rules”, “Do as you’re told” and other similar comments were given quite frequently to them, but they refused.
in.TM: What is Baraka for you?
Mihai: It’s a personal thing. I don’t have any relatives who appreciate art. For them, art is nothing. They’re asking me “Why do humans need it?”, so it’s kind of stupid, but… I know they love me, even though they don’t appreciate what I’m doing. So Baraka for me is… it’s why I made myself a family which I feel so good in. I think I belong in this family, so Baraka for me is my family.
David: The space is the one that brought us together. I used to work with Paul even before coming here, but Mihai was the one that tied the knot, and thus we became a group. In art, it’s good to have a sentimental, theoretical and practical support from someone. It’s a way of living.
Paul: Baraka is not just a space or a building. I sense a detachment here from my body and from the things that upset me. At the same time, I always think about the time since it was abandoned until we took ahold of it. It would be awesome to see every rat that used to roam around, every pigeon that used to fly overhead, or every person that was using it as a storage space.
Even more, there’s no censorship here. Not everything that you saw can be displayed anywhere. When put in a public space, the beholder that is not visually trained in contemporary arts can be confused at times. And this state can lead to observations that are not in accordance with the object itself. What I mean to say is that you should perceive art without getting involved. There are works in which we point fingers, but those fingers are pointed towards fictional characters, and should be understood in the context of visual objects.
Adi: Like David said, it’s a way of life. But even more than that, we manage to develop some uncertainty that one of us has. Almost every project we have goes like this: one of us suggests something; it brews in each one for some days; afterwards, each has his contribution. I think that’s why we manage to coagulate this well, because it manifests in us like a disease. What I mean is that each adds to that artwork with a story from his background: frustration, madness, pleasure or maybe even ignorance. At the end, each project gets developed through this disease’s energy.
Paul’s story with the human ear began when he collaborated with Mihai in a series of sculptures that they rather like to think of as 3D paintings. According to Mihai, during his first year of university, Paul was trying to push the envelope of coating surfaces. Not after long, he became so good with putting the human body on paper or canvas, that he decided to expand that in a three dimensional painting.
He was so obsessed with the human body that he wanted to represent it perfectly, because he realized that this is his thing. He’s a perfectionist, but he wasn’t pleased with his technique. Therefore, he decided that the only thing he wants to do perfectly is the ear, basically taking a small part of the body to do over and over again, ‘till perfection. He chuckles and adds “It’s nothing about Van Gogh or anything.”
David’s favorite work in Baraka is a four-by-seven meter painting, employing a style of drip paint, split into two canvases in the middle. They all collectively participated in making it not only the biggest painting in the gallery, but also a marvelous one, for that matter. “Everything you see here is not made by using traditional brushes. We actually use brooms and rags.”, Mihai is keen to mention.
Here’s what Mihai wanted to conclude everything with:
“We don’t like to be called artists, we think of ourselves more as witnesses. We witness art, and it is happening in front of us. I talked with David about this once and we both agreed that things that are happening here are more than just art. You know, more than the traditional view on it.”
There are numerous stories you’ll hear from the people living in the barracks, as to what their hardships, stories on their art, stories of their background and so forth. But I recommend you do what I did: contact them, visit them and show up with some beer and cigarettes, and just talk.
Here are other pictures from Baraka:
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