Bega Art Prize 2023
Timișoara 2023 – European Capital of Culture has allowed the development of a large number of exhibitions / theoretical chronological thematic experimental alternative / to which various profiles of institutional and independent curators, valuing subjectivity and autonomy, have been added.
“Comfort, safety, and, eventually, risk later emerged.”
In this setting, each and every artist is significant. Once you strip away the story of influence, the big budget, the so-called “sell or die,” and power, you’re left with the real art scene: places, artists, curators, and ideas. An environment that rejects arrogance, supports open floor plans, enthusiastically encourages emerging artists, and showcases contemporary curators for their work.
Curator Liviana Dan’s “WHITE TICKET” was the metric utilised by Kunsthalle Bega / Alina Cristescu, Andreea Drăghicescu, Bogdan Rața / to determine the Bega Art Prize 2023 selection.
The selection of the three curators / CRISTINA STOENESCU, GEORGIA ȚIDORESCU, and HORAȚIU LIPOT / was made by Liviana Dan, who provided justification based on each curator’s code and context.
Cristina Stoenescu specialises in “premium” programmes and territories. Her writing is marked by a serious and direct tone. Questions of post-humanism, modern photography, the function of the artist in society, and the intersection of art and politics are central to curatorial practises. Cristina Stoenescu draws inspiration from the luxurious ambiance of London’s museums and academies for her use of gardens, houses, hospitality, and silky wallpaper, all of which embrace the dual spaces of absence and absence archives caused by our ephemeral time.
Focusing on what she calls “windows of a past future,” Cristina Stoenescu puts out a kind of intellectually curious, enhanced, and refined curatorial approach that is unusual in the art world. She has brought both delightful surprise and a separation between isolated people and things, and she has been a catalyst for the dramatic shift in the way galleries and artists work.
For Georgia Țidorescu, staging an exhibition program, a 1to1 with an artist, and a curatorial text are a dream. In a way, what “gia – energy or gia – poetry” does is a project “to implement the feeling that something more is needed”… like pink clouds, ice cream trucks, tattoos, the well-maintained pink bangs held in place by black glasses, a portrait by George Roșu that arouses jealousy…
Gia develops projects about a world waiting to be built, contributing to the post-truth alternative. Parallel to reality, Gia imposes sudden clarity for an isolation collection; it’s about precarity / uncertainty. Gia showcases rebel artists who dynamite politics and fear nothing. A standard embraced by Gia in this alternative world is the ability to convey various “memes” – a dangerous expertise in the antechamber of power.
And Gia, energy=poetry, continues to wear black pearls / and a Dior red lipstick / the reddest red…
With lateral geometries, Horațiu Lipot has a wildcard. There are unpredictable outcomes, shadows, and utter risk in his curatorial programme.
Whether you see Horațiu Lipot as radical or psycho-poetic, you’ll have to give it some serious thought. If you’re willing to embrace “a desertion that does not involve an official departure,” Horațiu has intellectual bravery, theoretical visual mastery, and the ability to readily navigate contentious terrain.
When you’re up for an adventure, a subterranean realm reminiscent of the “light clarity of avocado salad in the morning,” Horațiu offers an extravagant stance…
Horațiu has the ability to comprehend states with a challenging outline if one is willing to embrace “a forgotten light on the porch,” the modest, domestic states, and the unnoticed icons.
Atelier35, IOMO, Sector 1, and Cazarma U are some of the places he partners with to promote professional artists, the daring, and so-called “fringe artists.”
Eccentric and rebellious, he ex-communicates the art victims.
Oops! Horatiu, could it be that truth is the initial casualty in the realm of art?!
Translated by TAH29
Kunsthalle Bega is an alternative and experimental space founded in Timisoara (Romania) in 2019, where contemporary art is thought, discussed and exhibited. Dedicated especially to young artists from Romania and the world, Kunsthalle Bega is aesthetically and socially interested in the platforms of contemporary art museums. Every year, following consultations with a specialised jury, it offers an award—the Bega Art Prize—to a Romanian curator under the age of 40 who has managed to change the rules of curatorial perception. Kunsthalle Bega is a project of Calina Foundation initiated by Alina Cristescu, Liviana Dan and Bogdan Rața, together with Andreea Drăghicescu and Ugron Lajos.
Awarded curators: Anca Verona Mihuleț (2019), Sandra Demetrescu (2020), Cosmin Costinaș (2021), Diana Marincu (2022).
Team: Alina Cristescu, Vlad Cîndea, Andreea Drăghicescu, Loredana Ilie, Gavril Pop, Bogdan Rața, Andreea Tiriplică, Lajos Ugron, Sorin Ștefan Valea.
Bega Art Prize 2022
Diana Marincu
When the curator is not only the initiator of an exhibition but also an exponent of creative practice models, a binder of the artistic communities in motion, Bega Art Prize tries to match the context by selecting a curator who has demonstrated both genuine involvement and vision. The winner of the fourth* edition is Diana Marincu, characterised by passion, curiosity and intelligence.
The world of art demands clarity, and Diana Marincu is ready to offer it, concluded the jury formed by Horea Avram, Liviana Dan and Anca Mihuleț. Diana Marincu has high standards and considers that the activity performed by a curator is a mission promoting artistic excellence. She has been familiar with numerous territories of art, from galleries, museums, and biennials, to some performing areas, by being constantly connected to art history. Her experience and credibility are significant. Diana Marincu’s influence on the contemporary art scene validates the intellectual core of a place and state that will express its maximum importance during the next period.
Diana Marincu knows that art gives the form/concrete – logical / to cultural changes, thus providing her projects with the acute visuality of her projects. By organizing the framework and the content, art becomes an answer to the themes and ideas of the contemporary context. It is what Timișoara, the European Capital of Culture 2023, expects from Diana Marincu.
Diana Marincu is a curator and art critic, a member of the AICA and IKT, and the Artistic Director of the Art Encounters Foundation in Timișoara starting in 2018.
The exhibitions she proposes to start from an investigative method, and most of the time, the questions she asks resonates with the problems identified by artists in their practice, from the visual and narrative strategies of the image construction to the tension of the relationships between the subject and the context, as well as with the post-humanist turn in contemporary art.
Between 2012 and 2018, she collaborated with the Plan B Foundation from Cluj and with the Brush Factory. In 2017, together with Ami Barak, Diana Marincu co-curated the second edition of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, Life – How to use it.
During the Romania-France season, Diana Marincu curated two exhibitions in France, accompanied by catalogs: Persona, MUCEM – Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, Marseille (2019); Manufacturing Nature / Naturalizing the Synthetic, Frac des Pays de la Loire (2018).
Her other exhibitions include: Michele Bressan – There are no bad trips, only fear, Galeria Strata, Bucharest (2022); At the edge of the world, group exhibition (co-curator Ciprian Mureșan), the Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara (2022); Invisible cities / Imaginary Realms, group exhibition (co-curators: Glad Carpencu Pop and Gia Țidorescu), The Garrison Commmand Timișoara, Asociația Culturală Contrasens (2021); I feel something, don’t know what (co-curator: Magda Kardasz), the Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara and the Zachęta Project Room Varsaw (2021); Harun Farocki – Reality should start, the Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara (2020); Double Heads Matches (together with Zsuzsanna Szegedy-Maszák), the New Gallery of Budapest (2018); the curatorial project in six parts carried out with Anca Verona Mihuleț The white point and the black cube, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest (2015-2017); M – Teodor Graur and Cristian Rusu, the Plan B Gallery, Cluj (2016); Inventing the truth. About fiction and reality, the 56th edition of the Art Biennial in Venice, the New Gallery of the Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research in Venice (2015).
* 2019 | Anca Verona Mihuleț ; 2020 | Sandra Demetrescu ; 2021 | Cosmin Costinaș
Bega Art Prize 2021
Cosmin Costinaș
Bega Art Prize, offered by Kunsthalle Bega, aims to encourage the curatorial activity by annually awarding a young Romanian curator, who is active both in the country and internationally. Appreciated for his progressive ideas, fluidity, transparency, and for the interaction of scientific observations with his personal ones, this year Cosmin Costinaș is nominated as laureate by the jury formed by Călin Dan, Liviana Dan and Mihai Pop.
Cosmin Costinaș / 1982, Satu Mare, RO / studied history and art history at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In 2011 he was the executive director and curator at Para Site, Hong Kong. He was the artistic director of Kathmandu Triennial / 2020 – 2021. He was a guest curator at the Dakar Biennial and Dhaka Art Summit (both in 2018) and the co-curator at the 10th Shanghai Biennial in 2014. Between 2008 and 2011 he was the curator of the BAK Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands. He was also the co-curator of the first Industrial Art Biennial in the Urals, Ekaterinburg, Russia in 2010 and between 2005 and 2007, the editor of Documenta 12 Magazines, Kassel, Germany.
At the beginning of his career, Cosmin Costinaș was an independent curator working in a space/ Romania, which was not the core of the art world and he did not use the narratives of hegemony. However, the visual language proposed an international discourse. He enters a complex world / Europe, with multiple visual regimes and multiple principles / cosmographic, aesthetic / organizational, on radically different bases. A whole world, with structures suggesting power / who says it? what does he say? /, complex cultural sceneries and strategies for decolonizing art. The anxiety of the moment is extended towards the policy of truth. Cosmin Costinaș approaches an intellectual structure for what he considers to form the values of a curator: duty, integrity, responsibility, communication, collaboration and solidarity. This is the platform he uses when he starts working for the most diverse region on the earth, Asia and Southeast Asia. A region comprising absolute monarchies and communist countries, all major forms of religion, excessively rich countries and countries that cannot eliminate social inequality. According to Cosmin Costinaș, contemporary art is called to develop another type of society to change the usual sense of internationality. Becoming a well-known curator, he uses the context to think about artistic production and the curatorship of resources for decolonization, transparency and horizontal structures. In order to form a serene universe, Cosmin Costinaș mixes scientific observations with personal ones. The most progressive and radical ideas become contemporary work practice. The personal approach remains fluent, clear and alert.
Kunsthalle Bega represents a space where contemporary art is exhibited, discussed and thought about. Kunsthalle Bega is especially dedicated to young artists from the local, national and international spectrum. Aesthetically and socially interested in the theoretical platforms of contemporary art museums, it annually offers a prize / the Bega Art Prize / to a curator who manages to change the rules in the curatorial perception. This year’s award is co-financed by the Project Centre Timișoara.
Cultural action carried out with the support of the Timişoara City Hall and the Timişoara Local Council through the Project Centre of Timișoara. The cultural action does not necessarily represent the position of the Timişoara City Hall and the Local Council of Timişoara. The content of the cultural action and the way in which its results can be used is the sole responsibility of the authors and the beneficiary of the funding. Timişoara City Hall and the Local Council of Timişoara are not responsible for the content of the material and the way it could be used.
Media partners: Radio România Cultural, ARTA magazine, Zeppelin magazine, Igloo media, Cultural observatory, Ro Point Modernism, Propagarta, IQads/SMARK, Banat Renaissance, Ro Book Agency, Children’s News.
Bega Art Prize 2020
Sandra Demetrescu
Given its second edition, the Bega Art Prize prize continues its mission regarding the professionalization of curatorial activities in Romania. This year the jury, consisting of Liviana Dan, Călin Dan and Mihai Pop, has mapped the current situation of the young scene, which is not 40 yet, identifying a great variety of personalities, from the ones in the process of formation, but expressing their own voice such as Cristina Stoenescu, Flaviu Rogojan or Georgiana Buț to the names which are already well-known in the international context such as Cosmin Costinaș.
Sandra Demetrescu has experienced the various stages in no time, from the junior to the assistant one, then to the one regarding the curator provided with full responsibilities; currently, she is running the curatorial department of the National Museum of Contemporary Art. Over time, she has carried out, independently or in different collaborations, a series of exhibitions reflecting various techniques and stakes, from great retrospectives to complex group exhibitions, while also proving the capacity to set up the discourse together with young and very young artists beyond the institutionalized frames of the Museum.
Bega Art Prize represents an initiative of Kunsthalle Bega, and the winner gets the amount of 5.000 Euros, as well as the invitation to carry out a curatorial project. Kunsthalle Bega and the jury’s members will support and assist the development and presentation of the awarded project in all its stages.
Bega Art Prize 2019
Anca Verona Mihuleţ
Anca Verona Mihuleţ is an art historian and independent curator. The projects proposed by Anca Mihuleț are motivated by specific historic and social coordinates, by the institutional frameworks where they take place – museums, biennials, galleries, alternative spaces or mobile structures, such as residencies – but also by her artistic and curatorial collaborations that unfold over the course of several years.
In 2016, Anca Verona Mihuleţ was awarded one of the ”Igor Zabel Grants”. She is now working in the curatorial team of the 2019 edition of the Singapore Biennale, a context in which she researched cases of artistic displacement and naturalization, together with modes in which transmediality can influence our perception onto the future.
Bega Art Prize is the annual award presented by Kunsthalle Bega and a specialised board to a Romanian curator active in the country or abroad, with a maximum age of 40 years.
Bega Art Prize 2019 jury:
Călin Dan, visual artist, curator, director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art
Liviana Dan, curator
Lia Perjovschi, visual artist, founder of CAA/CAA – the Contemporary Art Archive/Center for Anaysis and KM – the Knowledge Museum
Mara Rațiu, art theorist, vice-rector of the University of Arts and Design Cluj-Napoca
Anca Rujoiu, curator, co-curator of Art Encounters Biennial 2019 and PhD candidate at Monash University Melbourne