In 2010, I was invited to take part in the project West meets East – A cultural book exchange with another six artists (Daniela Frumuseanu, Joanne Luongo, Stela Lie, Naomi Sultanik, Manette Jungele and Kavita Singh Kale). We made art-books that we sent to each other to complete. Since then the project has evolved and includes many more artists. Although in the beginning I was making the entire book, now I prefer to use books that are damaged or that would otherwise be thrown away. This way they get a second life. For some books, I use fibers to sew the pages and create new stories for them to tell and for other books, I weaved covers for them to wear in their new life. The works in this project were exhibited as follows:
- It’s a snail snail’s world at Warwick, USA, 14th September – 14th October 2010
- It’s a snail snail’s world at UNArte Gallery, Bucharest, Romania, 1st November – 1st December 2010
- Caught in words at the Art Museum, Iași, Romania, 10th – 20th September 2011
- Inside stories at Parliament House, Brancusi Hall, Bucharest, Romania, 10th – 28th October 2011
- Inside stories at Art Galleries Focșani, Romania, 24th of January – 15 th of February 2012
- Weaved waves at the Art Museum, Constanta, Romania,1st – 30th August 2012
- In the memory of… at the County Library “Marin Preda”, Alexandria, Romania, 1st – 27th of March 2016.
- In the memory of… at the Art Galleries Focșani, Romania, March-April 2016
During this time, I participated in organizing the exhibitions DecoArt 2009 (Tulcea, August 14-September 14), West meets East (Bucharest, November 1 to December 1, 2010), the Wall for Peace (Bucharest, September 12 – September 18, 2011) and Books for the Soul and Mind (Constanta, Museum of Art, 1st to 30th of August 2012). My responsibilities included arranging the exhibitions, photographing the works of art, doing the exhibition catalogues for two of them, as well as posters and flyers, accompanying from the airport the artists coming from abroad.
In 2012, I made three books for An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street. Al-Mutanabbi is a street in Baghdad, Iraq, that in 2007 was the unfortunate place of a car bombing. This project was started in support of the victims and to spread a message of peace and the importance of books for the street was and remains the cultural centre of Baghdad. The three books I made open up like an accordion revealing with illustrations and collages the way the street was before the 2007 incident and the way it was rebuilt after, combined with words sending a positive message, written in Romanian, Arabic and English. This project resulted in several exhibitions.
See all the books here.
The joy of creating 