Samusocial shows us “who we are”

Adult homeless people from Bucharest have staged their first painting and graphic art exhibition entitled “Who Are We?.

Christine Leșcu, 21.02.2016, 13:03

Adult homeless
people from Bucharest have staged their first painting and graphic art
exhibition entitled Who Are We?. The exhibitors are some of the beneficiaries
of a project themed People Through Art, run by the Samusocial Association from
Romania.

In the special setting of the Romana Gallery in Bucharest, 11 homeless
people exhibited paintings depicting their personal experiences. The paintings
were covered in rags before the inauguration, and visitors had the opportunity
to unveil them, to discover the universe of those people as well as the secrets
of a world that surrounds us, but which we don’t have enough time to take
notice of.

The coordinator of the People Through Art project, visual arts teacher
Anca Florea, who also works as a volunteer for Samusocial, told us how it all
started and how the project developed:

It was my idea to initiate the project, I also wanted to work with
other categories of people, to do something which is different from what we
normally do. And it seemed to me the homeless have got potential. I met some of
those people in private, people who could have done something in the field of
arts. And I thought there might be more such people. And then, the idea crossed
my mind to initiate such a project. Then I approached Samusocial and named the
project People Through Art. They already had an occupational workshop project,
where all sorts of decorative objects were manufactured. They called some people
and we decided to have a workshop focussing on art for art’s sake, painting and
graphic art. We did some art only for personal development and in order to
develop people’s expression capacity and artistic skills. It exceeded my
expectations, we found people who were more open and willing to do things.

The exhibition challenges us to discover the others as creators of
beauty. Taking a look at the exhibited works, we cannot help wondering who we
are and what qualities lie dormant in us. Anca Florea told us about a man who
attended the workshop only once:

I popped in one morning, and he was already there, so we introduced
ourselves. I asked him where he had at night and he told me he didn’t sleep, he
had been walking because the weather was freezing. This touched me deeply: he
had been walking all night so as not to die of cold and yet, he was there. And
he didn’t complain for a single moment. I gave the workshop assignment, it was
a technical assignment, he stopped for a while and suddenly said, ‘give me a
sheet of paper so that I can make you a beautiful drawing’. And I was so
impressed with the fact that thatman, having suffered so much, felt the
need to do something beautiful. I think all of us have such a need to transform
our suffering into something beautiful.

We asked Anca Florea
what she thought of her students and how she encouraged them to discover art:

I found them really nice, while somewhat
shy in the beginning. I was shy as well, as I hadn’t had such an experience
before, it was for the first time when I worked with homeless people. But they
were also very perceptive and very open, and created a very pleasant atmosphere
in the studio. As a teacher, I tried to encourage each of them to find their
own direction and their own style and I encouraged them find themes for their
paintings and drawings themselves. After all, that’s what a work of art is all
about, giving something of you in your work. I also encouraged my students to
look for those things that are important to them. So the choice of theme is
entirely theirs. Furthermore, I tried to teach them a few techniques.

Liviu Lucian Marcu is one of the exhibitors. He spoke about his
paintings, which stemmed from his love for life, as the titles of his works
reveal, The table of noise, or The cherry-merry scumbag:

All my life I have been a drunk, I enjoyed life … so, I am somehow the
opposite of Brancusi: I am a Moldavian, he is from Oltenia; he created ‘The
Table of Silence’, I created ‘The Table of Noise’.

Bogdan Florin Ionescu paints faces:

I painted people like me I met in the painting studio. I had never
painted before. At first I thought it was like a game so I relaxed. While
playing, I began to like it.

The exhibition stayed open until the 13th of February.