Theory and action in feminist art practices
Bio: Flavia Lupu is a visual artist, assistant professor at the National University of Arts in
Bucharest. The artist has a PhD Diploma in Arts, with a thesis on the subject of the body
analyzed in the light of the relationship between image and politics. She participated in
exhibitions, workshops, conferences in Romania and Europe (Austria, Belgium, Italy, Hungary)
and had different personal projects discussing the socio-political and cultural premises that
marked mentalities in Romania. The topics of her works refer to socio-cultural appurtenance,
gender stereotypes, the relationship between the public and the private domain, identity,
prejudgments and prejudices.
The Aesthetics of National Communism in Romania
The Romanian cultural word was irremediable marked by the communist regime of Nicolae
Ceaușescu’s that started as a breath of fresh air for the artistic domain, and ended to be oppressive
also because of the imposed aesthetics. From the early 70s the figure of Ceaușescu and of his wife
Elena, started to be more and more present as a subject in the cultural press of the time and in
exhibition. By the 80s, the dogmatic formulas of representation were supposed to be ideologically
accurate and were subjected to scrutiny to a committee formed by artist and official of the
communist party. On festive occasions the head of the Artists Union had a public positions to
encourage the production of works in which the Romanian ruler to appear as an exemplary hero
of the nation. Such analyze of context has the purpose to give us a wider picture of Romanian
cultural background that can help to better understand the premises of the Romanian art scene
after the fall of the communist regime.