SHATTERED: SYMBOLIC GESTURE at RCI New York

One year since the start of Russia’s unprovoked, illegal aggression against Ukraine, we’re acknowledging the resilience of the Ukrainian people and the solidarity shown by Romania and the rest of the peace-loving world through a project that demonstrates the power of the visual arts and the spoken word to denounce the ordeals and preserve the memory of these tragic times. Presented in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute of America (UIA), "SHATTERED: Symbolic Gesture" is a large-scale international collaboration that consists of a multimedia exhibition, conceived by the Romanian-Canadian visual artist and polymath Oana Maria Cajal, accompanied by a series of video-poems and poetry readings offered by U.S.-based Romanian and Ukrainian poets.

After a successful opening in a simplified version during UIA’s Open House on February 24, the complete exhibition will be presented at the Romanian Cultural Institute on March 7 in the presence of artist Oana Maria Cajal and will be complemented by a series of readings of poetry written in reaction to the war in Ukraine offered by Adina Dabija, Cătălina Florescu, Olena Jennings, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Claudia Serea, Adela Sinclair, and Vera Sirota. With opening remarks by Kathy Nalywajko, the President of the Ukrainian Institute of America.

The art and poetry project, initially presented in Italy as part of La MaMa Umbria International in June 2022 and at the Bucharest International Poetry Festival in September 2022, has so far featured Ana Blandiana, Angela Baciu, Cristina A. Bejan, Cătălina Florescu, Ioana Ieronim, Nora Iuga, Olena Jennings, Ruth Margraff, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Claudia Serea, and Sylvie Simmons.

The multimedia exhibition includes 24 collages – “picto-impulses” as described by Oana Maria Cajal – which bear the visceral imprint of an artist confronted with the horrors of war and in awe with the Ukrainian people’s stoic resourcefulness. The works are displayed together with an art & poetry video made by Ștefan Cajal, featuring the above-mentioned poets and music by famed American composer and pianist Michael Roth.

The exhibition at the Romanian Cultural Institute’s "Brâncuși Gallery" will run between March 7-24, 2023.

Adina Dabija is born in Aiud, Romania. She worked as a journalist in Bucharest before she left Romania for a masters in French Studies in Quebec, Canada. She now lives in New York, where she practices acupuncture and hypnosis. Her first book, poezia-papusa, was awarded the Bucharest Writers’ Association Guild Prize in 1998. She published Stare nediferentiata in 2010 for which she was awarded Tomis prize in Constanta, Romania. In 2011 she published Beautybeast (North Shore Press), her first collection of poetry in English, and in 2012 her first novel, Saman (Ed. Polirom). Adina is currently working at four books: Songs from my Garden, a poetry collection, Nine Seeds for Life, a practical self-help book which combines narrative medicine from her native Romania with gardening and bio cognition for anyone suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder, Rumi’s Field, a novel on the mystical relationship between Rumi, the 12th century Sufi poet, and his spiritual companion Shams al Tabriz and Wise and Wild in America, a book of interviews with exponents of the traditional American values such as self-reliance, individual freedom and equality of opportunity to inspire the young generations. Some of her recent writings and interviews can be found at www.sol.center

Cătălina Florescu - conferred by Purdue University, Dr. Catalina Florina Florescu's PhD is in Comparative Literature/Medical Humanities. She teaches undergraduate courses at Pace University and graduate courses at Stevens Institute of Technology. Dr. Florescu is a working mother and a published author of critical and creative books. http://www.catalinaflorescu.com/

Olena Jennings is a writer and translator. She is the author of the poetry collection The Age of Secrets (Lost Horse Press, 2022) and the chapbook Memory Project. Her novel Temporary Shelter was released in 2021 from Cervena Barva Press. Her translation with Oksana Lutsyshyna from Ukrainian of Kateryna Kalytko's Nobody Knows Us Here and We Don't Know Anyone was released from Lost Horse Press and her translation of Vasyl Makhno's poetry collection Paper Bridge was released from Plamen Press. She is the founder and curator of the Poets of Queens.

Mihaela Moscaliuc was born and raised in Romania. She is the author of three poetry collections - Cemetery Ink (2021) and Immigrant Model (2010), both from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and Father Dirt (Alice James Books, 2010) - translator of Liliana Ursu’s Clay and Star (Etruscan Press, 2019) and Carmelia Leonte’s The Hiss of the Viper (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2014), editor of Insane Devotion: On the Writing of Gerald Stern (Trinity University Press, 2016), and co-editor of Border Lines: Poems of Migration (Knopf, 2020). The recipient of two Glenna Luschei Awards from Prairie Schooner, residency fellowships from Chateau de Lavigny (Switzerland), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and MacDowell, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a Fulbright fellowship. She is the translation editor for Plume and associate professor of English and Graduate Program Directors (M.A. English) at Monmouth University. www.mmoscaliuc.com

Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet with poems and translations published in Field, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, The Puritan, Oxford Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently In Those Years, No One Slept (Broadstone Books, 2023) and Writing on the Walls at Night (Unsolicited Press, 2022). Serea won the Joanne Scott Kennedy Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of Virginia, the New Letters Readers Award, and the Franklin-Christoph Award. Her poems have been translated in French, Italian, Russian, Arabic, and Farsi and featured on The Writer’s Almanac. She is a founding editor of National Translation Month, serves on the board of The Red Wheelbarrow Poets, and co-hosts their monthly readings.

Adela Sinclair is a NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Grant winning Romanian-American poet, translator, and teacher. Fluent in English, French, and Romanian, poetry is her primary, though not exclusive, medium. Her Chapbook entitled LA REVEDERE is now available through Finishing Line Press. Her poetry explores themes of cultural identity, memory, loss, trauma, and desire. Her work appears on “The Bridge,” published by Brooklyn Poets, and Tupelo Press’ “30/30 Project.” “On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl Exploded”, Adela’s poem is published in the Winter Anthology Healing Felines and Femmes by Other Worldly Women Press. Adela is currently working with an editor on her first full-length poetry collection, “The Butcher’s Granddaughter,” a lyrical memoir of her childhood in Romania. She has performed her poetry all over New York City including the Yale Club, 92nd Street Y, Bowery Poetry Club, Poet’s House, Brooklyn Poets, Books are Magic, KGB Bar, Saint Francis College, and Writer’s Voice at the JCC. She is a founding member and poetry editor of the emerging literary magazine, “Unbound Brooklyn,” and volunteers with Ugly Duckling Presse in Brooklyn. Adela holds a BA in French Culture and Civilization from SUNY Albany, with additional coursework at the Sorbonne University of Paris, an MA in Education from Hunter College (NYC), and an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from St. Francis College (Brooklyn).

Vera Sirota is the proud granddaughter of Ukrainian immigrants. Vera serves as a mentor for Girls Write Now, a creative writing organization for high school girls and gender-expansive youth in NYC. Vera’s poems have been featured in the Poetry Distillery, Stories by Girls Write Now, Dark Onus Lit, Ukrainian American Poets Respond, Music of Hope: a benefit concert in support of Ukraine, and the “SHATTERED: SYMBOLIC GESTURE” exhibition. Vera is a 2022 Martha Award Finalist for the David Wade Hogue Scholarship. She is a co-founder of the West of Willow poetry and music collective in Hoboken, New Jersey.