The ICC Gallery was proud to present the works of the Romanian artist Tara (von Neudorf) – on display for the first time in Poland. Tara most often uses black marker pens and red paint as his tools. In his best known pieces, grotesque and uncompromising truth about our times is being scribbled on old, communist maps and school boards. His works allude to the unwelcome history and provide commentary on contemporary politics – local, Romanian one, as well as some universal issues.

Tara is one of the most original and – simultaneously – most censored contemporary Romanian artists. His art, both sarcastic and suffused with black humour, triggers violent emotions by means of its expressive form as well as critical content. The ICC discovers Tara not only for Poland, but also for the whole of Europe. In general, the artist works in Sibiu and Engelthal, while his pieces are mainly displayed at the Anaid Gallery in Bucharest. Undoubtedly, the presence of his art in Krakow is quite an event. The year 2012 was particularly fortunate for the artist as he was awarded in the Strabag Artaward Interational competition, and his pieces were exhibited in Vienna.

The exhibition revealed the most important motifs in the works of the artist, which are linked by an extremely subjective way of interpreting difficult and controversial historical events. This peculiar “history according to the artist” exposes recurring and eternal, always the same, political mechanisms of instrumentalisation, manipulation and mythologisation of history for the sake of power as well as strategies of villainy and crime perpetrated in the name of higher causes, i.e. heroism, glorification of victimhood, nation, or faith.
The exhibition introduces this extraordinary artist who works on the “peripheries” of Europe through the prism of six thematic threads. It also hopes to address geopolitics of art. The art of Tara (von Neudorf) is powerfully influenced by the context of a place where he comes from and where he still works, namely Transylvania. A local context provides an opportunity for an artistic narrative on identity, difficult history, co-existence of cultures, unhealed wounds, emptiness of depopulated areas. Corruption, poverty, communism, stupidity, racism, fear, lies, bureaucracy, disability, greed, despair are the key words, key concepts around which Tara’s works centres. They were inscribed on one of the works from a famous series titled “Black Rumania.” The artist comments on the relations between Romania and the European Union; he teaches communist history; he discovers bloodstained pages of totalitarian ideologies. Maps, sacred books, religious symbols, flags, dates, sites of torture, coffins, tanks, media messages, blood… With thick lines and distinctive colours Tara talks about important and fundamental issues.

The exhibition featured over 80 pieces: maps, works on paper, sculptures as well as clothes designed by the artist – embroidered, painted over, created in a thoroughly original way.