Ana Avram (born 1999) is living and working in Cluj-Napoca. Through her artistic practice she proposes the negotiation of reality, in spatial contexts, through installations and sculptures situated on the border between materiality and meta-reality. She gravitates towards strange juxtapositions of familiar objects and elements, which represent the product of mediating internal scenographies, within the limits imposed by physicality. Ana strongly believes in intuitive creation and research, which are delivered from a subconscious cumulus – the creative process being a sincere attempt to bring to the surface and clarify.

The artwork, inspired by Ion Creanga's 'Human Stupidity', transforms the original story into personal symbols of anxiety. The traditional stove becomes a terracotta one, the action is set in a familiar house, and the block of salt becomes a 'huge boulder'. The diptych depicts two scenes, representing the balance between dynamism and inertia, chaos and catatonia, life and death. The first scene represents obsessive-compulsive mechanisms, while the second shows decay and putrefaction. The work critiques people’s emotional reaction and tendency to catastrophize in the face of absurd and imminent danger, replacing it with a plastic dissection of coping methods.

(Gia Țidorescu)