The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
- RCI USA
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
A Romanian-American-Mexican artistic dialogue
About The Event
Conceived as a polyphonic environment of memory, absence, and unstable narration, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, curated by Charles Moore, unfolds as a space where personal histories and political inheritances remain in constant negotiation.
Structured as a Romanian-American-Mexican dialogue, the exhibition brings together the works of ten artists: Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Carlos Genova, Dumitru Gorzo, Nicholas Guzman, Erika Harrsch, Aurora Király, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Vlad Nancă, Șerban Savu, and Mihai Zgondoiu. Across these distinct practices, a shared terrain emerges—one shaped by migration, translation, and the layered experience of belonging across geographies.
Drawing from Milan Kundera’s eponymous novel, the exhibition resists linear storytelling, instead proposing a fragmented constellation of images, gestures, and temporalities. Memory appears not as a site of preservation, but as a volatile structure—subject to erosion, distortion, and reassembly—while forgetting emerges as both rupture and generative condition.
Within this shifting terrain, the works navigate the porous boundaries between intimacy and collective history, where displacement, ideology, and the instability of archives inscribe themselves onto bodies, materials, and space. The domestic and the political collapse into one another, revealing how remembrance is always entangled with structures of visibility and power. Threaded through these tensions is a quiet insistence on ambiguity, irony, and tonal dissonance. Here, laughter does not resolve contradiction but sustains it—opening a space in which fragility, tenderness, and estrangement coexist.
Presented at the Romanian Cultural Institute New York, the exhibition becomes less a statement than an atmosphere—an invitation to inhabit uncertainty and to consider how what is remembered and what is allowed to fade continuously reconfigure the present.
Meet the Artists
Carlos Genova is a Mexico-Berlin-based artist primarily working in the field of painting. Explorations of the unconscious create dreamlike worlds and imagery that touch upon multicultural symbolism and mythologies through both abstraction and figuration. Genova earned a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from Anáhuac University in 2000. Throughout his career, he has developed a distinguished career in the visual arts, exhibiting his work in internationally renowned galleries and museums. With an extensive exhibition history, he has had solo exhibitions with the Museum of Oaxacan Painters (MUPO), Oaxaca, Mexico; the Miami Circle of Contemporary Art, Miami, USA; and the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, Mérida, Mexico, as well as participated in events such the II Biennial of Contemporary Art of León, Guanajuato, Mexico; Zona Maco in Mexico City, Mexico; BAAM Residency in Berlin, Germany, among many others.
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.
Nicolas Guzman reconsiders materiality, composition, and the very act of seeing through his explorations in visual art. Born in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, Guzmán was raised in the culturally rich environment of Veracruz. He began creating both visual art and music in his youth. Guzmán’s work explores perception itself, investigating the elemental qualities of art and how they interact. While he incorporates film and performance into his practice, painting remains the foundation of his creative inquiry. Guzmán has held solo exhibitions at Museo de Arte Prehispánico Rufino Tamayo (Oaxaca), Museo de la Ciudad de México (CDMX), Galería Chao Galpão (São Luís, Brazil), Spike Print Studio (Bristol, UK), USSR (CDMX), and the Mexican Museum (San Francisco, USA). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at Galería Nueva (Madrid, Spain), the Tokyo University of the Arts and Music (Japan), Centro de las Artes de San Agustín Etla (Oaxaca), and the Museo de Arte de Baja California Sur (MUABCS), among others.
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.
Salvador Jiménez-Flores is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Jalisco, México. Since coming to the United States, Jiménez-Flores has contributed to the art scene by producing a mixture of socially conscious installation, public, and studio-based art. He has presented his work at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and Casa de la Cultura in Jalisco, México amongst others. He has completed an artist residency at the Harvard Ceramics Program, Office of the Arts at Harvard University and the City of Boston. He was the recipient of a New England Foundation for the Arts grant and has been nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant award for his sculpture work.
Aurora Kiraly works at the intersection of photography with drawing, textile art or installations, exploring how the mind records, relives, remembers. Often exploring feminist theories in relation with identity-making and the status of women, her works relates to complex connections between events, public and private sphere of experience. As of 2007 she has taught at the Department of Photography and Dynamic Image of the National University of Arts, Bucharest. Since 2001 she has been the director of Galeria Nouă. In 2006 she coordinated the book “Photography in contemporary art. Trends in Romania after 1989”, published by Galeria Noua at Unarte Publishing House. In 2013 she received her Ph.D in Visual Arts, National University of Fine Arts from Bucharest. She has participated in residencies such as Kunsthalle Mulhouse and the Boghossian Foundation at Villa Empain and has works in collections such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MMA), the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, and the European Parliament’s Contemporary Art Collection. This is complemented by a prolific three-decade international exhibition history.
Hortensia Mi Kafchin was born in Galati, Romania, and now lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Kafchin’s painting embraces a fascination with hybridity that reflects the blended visual environment of our media age. As a figurative painter making work about the contemporary trans experience, Kafchin vividly renders the personal in utopian scenes that comment on the technological, environmental, and socio-political realities of our time. Kafchin received a degree from the University of Art and Design in Cluj in 2010. Her work can be found in collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, NY; and the Ludwig Museum, Köln, Germany. Kafchin has presented solo exhibitions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania; Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany; Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara, Romania; Lyles & King, New York, NY; and Museum of Art, Cluj, Romania, among others.
Vlad Nancă is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Bucharest. From excavating political and cultural symbols to evoke nostalgia to conceptions of architectural, public, and outer space, his objects and installations use material to evaluate intention. Nancă’s work examines the way ideas reverberate throughout contemporary objects and ideologies. He studied at the Department of Photography and Moving Image at the National University of Arts, Bucharest. To date, he has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions with Vis-a-Vis, Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest; The City and the City, KVOST – Kunstverein Ost, Berlin; and In the Natural Landscape the Human Is an Intruder, Sabot Gallery, Cluj-Napoca, and the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, among others.
Şerban Savu is a Romanian contemporary painter known for his figurative paintings depicting contemporary Romanians, marked by a strong sense of Socialist-Realism and the presence of historical Realism. Savu graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, followed by a two-year postgraduate research grant at Nicolae Iorga in Venice, Italy. He has participated in multiple biennials such as the third Mediterranean Biennale in Haifa, Israel; the Biennial of Young Artists in Bucharest, Romania; the third and fourth Prague Biennale in Prague, Czech Republic or the Art Encounter Biennial in Timisoara, Romania. Savu has had solo and group exhibitions at industry leading art galleries and major institutions such as the Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, Korea; the Korea Foundation in Seoul, Korea; the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Caste in Warsaw, Poland; the Luckman Fine Arts Complex in Los Angeles, USA; the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in Ishøj, Denmark; the MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art in Debrecen, Hungary; and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, among others. Savu is collected by major public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland; the Hort Family Collection in New York, the United States of America; and the Zabludowicz Collection in London, the United Kingdom.
Mihai Zgondoiu is an artist, curator, and independent gallery owner, with a PhD in Visual Arts from the National University of Arts in Bucharest (UNArte). Zgondoiu explores various media and artistic techniques to critically interrogate clichés of contemporary society, mocking false values and icons promoted through media and online social platforms. His interest in ecological thinking and practice often reflects a deepening awareness of human impact on the planet and the need to transform creativity into a catalyst for change. Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards, including the Union of Plastic Artists of Romania (UAP) awards for “Art in Public Space” and the “Multimedia Award”. He has exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries, museums, and cultural institutions such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest (RO), Museum of Recent Art (MARe), Bucharest (RO), KANAL Centre Pompidou, Brussels (BE), Museum of Young Art, Vienna (AT), and Museum Beelden Aan Zee, The Hague (NL). His works are part of public and private collections, such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) Bucharest (RO), the Luciano Benetton Collection (IT), the Alain Servais Collection (BE), and the Pfizer Foundation Collection (RO), among others. While currently a University Lecturer at UVT, Faculty of Arts and Design in Timișoara, he is also the founder of the art gallery/space Atelier 030202 in Bucharest, and co-founded the art magazine PROPAGARTA.
Meet the Curator
Charles Moore is a New York-based curator. After receiving his master’s degree in museum studies from Harvard, he received a doctorate from Columbia University’s. He is the author of The Black Market: A Guide to Art Collecting (2020); The Brilliance of the Color Black Through the Eyes of Art Collectors (2021); 24-Hour Interview (2025); and Global Conversations: Romania (2026).
