In Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy, memories are not seen as mere reflections of the past, but as elements that can influence and often constrain individual freedom. Sartre emphasizes the importance of the freedom and responsibility of every human being, stating that the individual is defined by his or her choices, not by past experiences. In this vision, memories should not become a burden that determines the actions of the present, but rather a starting point for living authentically, without being captive to a past that cannot be changed. Avoiding memories, in this context, can be seen as a form of liberation, an attempt to live fully in the present and to build an identity based on choices and actions in the present moment, not on the shadow of the past. In this way, the individual is free to define, choose and act without being trapped in a web of limiting memories.^[1]

Denise Parizek, curator of the exhibition “Avoiding Memories”, proposes a concept that takes the shape of a debate on trauma, feminicide, violence, climate crises, migration, wars, global political and social issues.

The avoidance of memories and the search for other scientific or medical tools to remove the issues that deepen inner pain are expressed through conceptually powerful works. The international artists Guadalupe Aldrete, Mila Balzhieva, Paula Flores, Natalia Gurova, Hubert Hasler, Gabriel Virgilio Luciani, Isidora Krstic and Mihai Zgondoiu turn to symbols and research on how we can overcome trauma. Indirectly, the answer is immediately apparent: art is a form of liberation and soul healing. Although the messages of the works seem conceptual at first glance, the works themselves are the medicines that facilitate the path forward towards avoiding the memories.

Avoidance is a concept also anchored in Louise Bourgeois’ artistic practice, through her intense and introspective works, she explores the trauma of the past, but also the conflict between the desire to forget and the need to confront painful memories. Her sculptures, such as Maman and The Destruction of the Father, illustrate how childhood traumas and family relationships are re-evaluated and reinterpreted, offering both a distancing from them and a form of catharsis. Through these works, Bourgeois creates a space where memories simultaneously become a burden to be avoided and a necessary means of self-healing.

The “Avoiding memories” exhibition, held in November 2024 at the contemporary art gallery META Spațiu in Timișoara, is a scenario for a healed society, where colors, shadows, lights, textures, gestures are representative of a suffering transposed in front of an audience that not only admires the aesthetics of the artwork, but also the artist’s power to tackle such an emotionally difficult subject. Each work becomes a catharsis, a medium in which trauma is art on display and pain is translated into visual forms that enable the process of emotional release.

In artist Guadalupe Aldrete’s installation Banderola III, the cave is transformed into an environment where stories are told and remain imprinted inside the wall. The use of a curtain, painted in ink, suggests a memory that has changed over time. The fragility of the curtain, is in contrast to the power of people to metamorphose memories and relationships. It can be torn, it can be destroyed by society, but the memory of it will always remain present in an environment where stories are kept inside the wall. The curtain, a decorative element that does not allow light to penetrate, becomes a leitmotif for Plato’s Cave, where people do not perceive the light of truth, but only the shadows cast on the cave walls. In this context, the light symbolizes knowledge, truth and access to the essence of reality, while the curtain functions as a barrier between the individual and a deeper understanding of the world.

The collective memory and ancestral memory illustrate the idea of spiritual and cultural heritage, acquired only through a tangible and persistent object. The banderole, the title of the work, is a textile, sometimes protective, that absorbs information and keeps it intact until future generations understand the role of human connection.

Banderola III embodies, in an artistic manner, the construction of humanity’s spaces of protection and connection. Just as in the caves of the ancestors, where people gathered to share stories and explore the depths of their own being, so in Boccacio’s allegorical Decameron, stories become a refuge. Here, young people flee the negative realities of life, seeking through stories a way to face fear and uncertainty. The space takes on the characteristics of a sacred artwork, where each narrative transforms the ancestor into its own artist, where storytelling is not only a form of communion, but also a way to navigate human complexity, to understand and overcome life’s challenges.

Metal represents the strength and power to sustain a charged history, symbolizing strength and durability. The metal is engraved using a traditional technique, where the chisel – the main tool – metamorphosed into ancestors, imprints an immortal story.

Neuropteris-2, Mila Balzhieva’s work is part of a series of textiles that examine the interplay between handmade craftsmanship and digital aesthetics, focusing on extinct flora. Each piece is hand-stitched, inspired by long-extinct plant species, mixing the real with the imaginary. In Neuropteris-2, reinterpreted ancient forms coalesce, creating a new botanical vision that seems both familiar and from a parallel world. The work reflects the resilience and transformation of nature, opening a dialog between the extinct and the speculative. This piece embodies the tension between the organic patience of hand craftsmanship and the abstract and elegant influences of digital design, linking past, present and imagined futures.

Mila delves into the world of hand craftsmanship and constructs a digital aesthetic that captures the disappearing flora. Tradition and history challenge the artist to carry on the inheritance she has received, but adapted to the contemporary context. Industrialization has replaced craftsmanship with technology, mirroring the adaptability of nature. Plants, symbols of change and resilience, inspire both technology and art, where abstraction reflects nature’s metamorphosing processes.

 Just as plants change shape to survive, art goes beyond the figurative, capturing the essence of adaptation and interconnectedness. Thus technology, nature and art evolve together in a cycle of transformation and mutual inspiration.

Organic patience and digital design are concepts introduced by Mila into the narrative of her work. She starts with a story from the past, the main character being the craft, which gradually develops and comes to maturity, embodied by digital design. The two stages of development capture the advance of technology over artistic vision – the way of presenting art in two different ways, reality confronting the imaginary. As Olafur Eliasson says: “Technology is a medium through which we can experience reality. It is a tool that can help us understand the world, but art helps us feel that understanding.”^[2]

Paula Flores, in her Invision jaguars conceptualizes life, presenting the reality ignored by society: ”LIFE can never, by human standards, be proportioned fairly and justly, either for better or for worse. LIFE needs freedom in its own definition.”

Life, as it is presented, having features characteristic of man, is transfigured into a human being, taking a continuous form and manifesting the idea of perpetual metamorphosis. The idea of personification is also present in the work of Mila Balzhieva, the handmade creation (craft) takes the form of a character, in Paula’s installation, life – is an entity with a human consciousness and form. Thus, craft and life become not just tools of creation, but autonomous entities, interacting with the viewer, challenging him to reflect on the relationship between craft, existence and human perception. Through these approaches, both Mila and Paula explore the potential of art to transcend material limits and encourage a deep connection with the viewer, where forms and ideas become persons with their own intentions and feelings.

In Paula’s artwork, the vision of avoiding memories is supported by several symbols. Candles, which evoke light, hope and spirituality, can represent not only life and answers, but also its ephemerality, as they are meant to burn and burn out. Sand, associated with time and ephemerality, signifies its irreversible passing and the fragility of existence, reminding us that everything is ephemeral. Turmeric, known for its healing and purifying properties, symbolizes restoration, transformation and spiritual cleansing within the installation.

Natalia Gurova illustrates the body and the face of suffering, torn by the choice to avoid the painful memory, but also by the assumption that we are moving away from our identity. The sculpture that is part of The hollow shell series presents a body that conceptualizes the idea of suffering. The physical pain, which is manifested due to the distorted position, focuses on the acceptance of inner conflict and trauma. The appearance of red stains suggests the presence of blood imprinted on the artwork, which confirms that the memory will never completely fade away, no matter how hard we try to detach, its traces remain imprinted in the body forever.

The artwork The hollow shell does not try to hide the suffering, on the contrary, the pain becomes a dystopian art, existing in a disturbing reality that destroys human features. The white body of the figure, though symbolizing purity, is not alienated and healed. The silhouette is marked by the contrast between the white and the black noncoloration present on the shoes – the darkness that pervades the entire body and takes hold of the feelings, the trauma remaining unresolved.

Inspired by the fairy tale The Frog Prince, Hubert Hasler assembles two kissing frogs on a pedestal, suggesting from the title Beauty never dies that beauty has no end. The moral behind the story emphasizes the power of love in the face of perfection and society’s vision. Beauty is abstracted into the aesthetics of ugliness out of a desire to present an ideal of beauty generated by artificial intelligence. The artist, in this work, explores the contrast between perfect beauty and physical imperfections, suggesting that these flaws might prevent the realization of perfect love. Despite this vision, however, the sculptural figures, while not fitting into traditional patterns of beauty, experience deep love and genuine soul fulfilment. The technique used, mummification, suggests the process of preserving the body. Hubert reinterprets the technique by creating two frogs whose hearts pulsate with life in their bodies and convey deep feelings expressed through the intimate gesture of kissing. The support of love is achieved with the pedestal that captures the triumph of love and the display of feelings to society.

The writing of a love story in visual art, expressed through the kiss, has been addressed throughout the history of art in many works. Gustav Klimt, in his works The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I beauty is idealized and transformed into a form of spirituality. He uses gold and ornamental elements to emphasize not only the physical appearance but also the symbolic nature of beauty, seeing it as a vehicle of pure love and transcendence.

To achieve a weightless state suggests at first glance a state of meditation and inner tranquillity. Connecting the title of this work with the concept of the exhibition, we notice that the artist Isidora Krstic experiences these sensations through the process of avoiding memories.

Isidora resorts, atypically, to her body, which becomes a work of art reflecting the daily struggle, levitating with the balance between work, relationships, friendships, artistic practice, health, sport and livelihood. Art once again demonstrates its miraculous power to heal, drawing on simple methods such as creativity and inspiration that build a utopian world in a challenging reality.

Heraclitus said that “Everything flows, nothing remains constant”. In this state, the body is not completely free, but neither is it completely constrained, suspended in a process of continuous transformation. Isidore’s body-turned-into-art does not completely abandon the memory, but places it in a state of continuous evolution, rethinking and reinterpreting it through artistic practice.

The artist, like Natalia Gurova, builds her work around the idea of the avoidance of memories, both dealing with personal and profound themes, but in a way that reflects their individual experiences. If Natalia Gurova presents the face of suffering, shrouding grief in an intense and vulnerable aesthetic, the artist in turn creates works that, through the avoidance of memories, explore ways to overcome trauma and reconfigure suffering through a path of liberation. In this way, both artists use art as a means of responding to life’s challenges, each bringing a unique vision to the process of healing and rebuilding identity.

Minimalism and the deliberate use of emptiness in the #Rien series become a manifesto against the visual and symbolic overload that dominates contemporary art. Thus, Mihai Zgondoiu, through the conceptual works in #Rien, not only challenges viewers to reconsider what artistic value means in the absence of a price, but also challenges the structures that reinterpret art from an act of creation into a commodity. They incite a reconsideration of the role of the artist as mediator between the authenticity of expression and the commercial demands of the art industry.

Avoiding memories of art through the use of false icons and value clichés? Rien (nothing) is the answer offered to this question. Nothing must not turn art into a commodity. Nothing should be subject to commercial pressures and market expectations. Nothing is recognized if it has no artistic value.

This series critiques the evolution of artworks in terms of their financial value. Mihai sketches a scenario in which reinterpretation and imitation of works from art history become the only objects with significant historical value and market demand. Thus, the contemporary artist is forced to conform to the demands of society, renouncing the creative freedom and imagination that characterized the artistic process.

Through video, the artist suggests the value of art in the context where the author is anonymous and her execution is realized in a public space where it can be seen by all passers-by and cannot be exhibited in a conventional exhibition. In this situation, what amount reflects the value of the work? Art becomes a commodity when it is detached from the creative act and displayed on a pedestal, and its sum becomes the work of art itself.

Clement Greenberg, one of the most influential art critics of the 20th century, argued that “the value of a work of art is determined by its authenticity and innovation rather than by its popularity or commercial success”. He believed that the true value of art derives from its ability to transcend convention and explore new forms of expression.^[3] Thus, a work of art is not just an aesthetic and beautiful object that is put on sale, but a complex of ideas, emotions and meanings that transcends mere materiality.

The dance of the heart is the subtle choreography of feelings of love and hope, and the concept of dance and movement creates a boundary between happiness and each step that has to overcome problems and suffering.

Gabriel Virgilio Luciani does not exhibit a performative work, but experiences through art a deep bodily meditation. The convulsions and contortions presented in the performative film Breakup emphasize the feeling of pain and heartbreak, contrasting with the oblivion of negative memories. Similar to Bill Viola’s work The Encounter (2012), which explores the tensions between desire, transformation and inter-human bonds through visual images that reflect the fragility of the body and the process of spiritual change, Gabriel illustrates physical suffering as an artistic act.

Gabriel’s journey of avoidance culminates in performance, which captures the tensions between desire, metamorphosis, and the dissolution of identity, all of which are closely tied to the layered connections between people.

The title Breakup evokes the idea of a deep separation from the past, its avoidance and the birth of new memories, shaped in an art marked by pain, which, with the healing process, has turned into a liberating form. Like Isidora Krstic, Gabriel uses his own body to explore and capture physical strength in the face of the limitations imposed by suffering. By rethinking a new beginning through art, a radical alteration of reality takes place, empowering liberation and healing.

In conclusion, avoidance is the central theme of Avoiding Memories, a concept that suggests that the past and memories are not ephemeral, but rather become optional elements that can be ignored or reinterpreted in a utopian aesthetic. In this artistic atmosphere, suffering is rethought, becoming a starting point for individual transformation. Art, in its essence, reveals itself as a form of liberation, a way through which man can escape from the dark chamber of the past.

Suffering, the central phenomenon of the exhibition, is contrasted with healing, and the contrast between the two becomes the fundamental structure of the artistic message. The phenomenon – suffering – is presented in antithesis to the effect – healing, thus creating a dialog between darkness and light, between limitation and liberation. Thus, the exhibition becomes an act of reclaiming the possibility of regeneration, through the reconstruction of memories and reinterpretation of the past.

^[1]  Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism. Translated by Carol Macomber, Yale University Press, 2007.

^[2] Eliasson, Olafur. Reality Machines. Koenig Books, 2015.

^[3] Greenberg, C. Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Beacon Press, 1961.