These are documentary photographs of an intervention in public space that I made during a residency at the International Center of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, in the summer of 2008. The curatorial requirements of the program were to initiate a site-specific project in relation with Rahova-Uranus, a central area disfigured by the communist urban planning, situated in the proximity of the House of the People andthe Romanian Academy.
I found here, apart from each other, an ornamental delimitation in something that used to be a pavement and a body of cement, probably from the remains of a construction site. I covered them with golden foil.
I tried to transform these pieces in some kind of weird treasures. I particularly wished to refer to the Golden Age, the propagandistic name for the Romanian communist period, and to gold as a standard of beauty in the acceptance of the ethnic Roma. Both references are obvious components of the area I had to investigate. The absurd exercise of connecting these features gave me the possibility to experience what I perceived to be an absurd urban landscape.
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