Artist Talk | Personal Histories and Collective Memory
- RCI USA
- 9 minutes ago
- 3 min read
About The Event
Join us for a special conversation with Erika Harrsch (Mexico) and Dumitru Gorzo (Romania), presented as part of the exhibition The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, curated by Charles Moore, on view at the Brâncuși Gallery through August 31.
Inspired by "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", Milan Kundera’s famous novel, the exhibition brings together Romanian, American, and Mexican artists in a dynamic cross-cultural dialogue. Conceived as a polyphonic landscape, it explores memory, absence, and unstable narration as forces in constant negotiation. Rather than following a linear narrative, the exhibition presents a constellation of works that examine the fragile intersections between personal histories and collective experience, where displacement, ideology, and the instability of archives become inscribed onto bodies, materials, and space. Through diverse artistic perspectives, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how remembering and forgetting continuously shape identity, history, and our understanding of the present.
In this context, artists Erika Harrsch and Dumitru Gorzo will reflect on how memory informs their artistic practices, discussing the ways biography, migration, identity, and cultural inheritance shape contemporary visual language. Their conversation will offer a unique opportunity to engage with the exhibition's central themes through the perspectives of two internationally recognized artists whose work navigates the complex relationship between individual experience and broader historical narratives.
Through dialogue, the program invites audiences to consider how remembering and forgetting are not opposing forces but intertwined processes that continually reshape our understanding of the past and ourselves.
Meet the Guests
Dimitru Gorzo transcends strict categorization, navigating various genres, platforms, and media. He earned a BA and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Advanced Studies in Painting from the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Romania, and is a founding member of Rostopasca, an influential contemporary artistic movement in Romania. Gorzo has exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions at prominent venues, including the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest (RO), BMoCA in Denver (CO), the New Jersey Museum of Contemporary Art (NJ MoCA), the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu (RO), Kunstverein Viernheim (DE), the 2001 Venice Biennale (Romanian Pavilion) in Venice (IT), the Istanbul Biennial in Istanbul (TR), the Marina Abramović Institute in San Francisco (CA), Kunsthalle Budapest (HU), MODEM in Debrecen (HU), and the Museum Küppersmühle in Duisburg (DE), among others. Gorzo currently divides his time between Bucharest, Romania, and Brooklyn, New York.
Erika Harrsch is a multidisciplinary artist born in Mexico City, using both traditional mediums combined with new media and technologies she constructs visual, multisensory, and interactive experiences exploring narratives surrounding individual and cultural preoccupations, as well as critical social, political, and environmental issues. Harrsch has been selected to participate in the Fokus-Lodz Biennale, Lodz, Polonia; 798 Biennale, Beijing, China; International Media Art Biennale, Seoul, South Korea; Fotofest Biennial, Houston, Texas; as well as the 6th and 7th FEMSA-Monterrey Biennial, Mexico. Her work has been shown in galleries, festivals, and international artistic residencies, as well as the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City), Museo del Barrio (New York City), Nevada Museum of Art (Reno, Nevada), Bellevue Arts Museum (Bellevue, Washington), in the United States; Göteborg Konstmuseum, Sweden; Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium; Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (Nuevo León) and Museo de la Ciudad (Querétaro), in Mexico. Her work is included in numerous international public and private collections, including the Musée de la Photographie in Belgium, and the Eaton Corporation and the Fidelity Corporation in the United States.
