Kunsthalle Bega is an alternative and experimental art space founded in 2019 at Timisoara by Alina Cristescu, Liviana Dan and Bogdan Rața trough the Calina Foundation. Dedicated to supporting artistic production and understanding the current problems of the creative spectrum from a curatorial perspective, it awards the Bega Art Prize to a Romanian curator who manages to change curatorial perception. Involved in educational projects with diverse communities, Kunsthalle Bega promotes the significant importance of art publications.
JOURNALISTIC MATERIAL: This journalistic material was created through a grant from Energie! Creation Scholarships, awarded by the Municipality of Timișoara, through the Project Center. The material does not necessarily represent the position of the Project Center of the Municipality of Timișoara, and it is not responsible for its content or how it may be used.
Alex Mirutziu: Given the remarkable trajectory of the Kunsthalle Bega art space since its inception, I would like to start by asking: what were the key moments in your lives that led you to initiate such an ambitious project, the first of its kind on this scale in Romania? I know that, besides your collaborative relationship, you also share a friendship. What motivated you to open this space in 2019?
Alina Cristescu: Just the other day, I was joking with Ugron Lajos, who has been with me since the very first day of establishing the Calina foundation, that we’re in a kind of 17-year professional marriage. What I mean to say is that one doesn’t work without the other; a partnership needs mutual friendship. I admired Bogdan ever since I saw his works; in 2009, we even started preparing an exhibition together, which we didn’t manage to complete. In 2016, if I remember correctly—I’m never good at keeping records—I saw a poster at the Faculty of Arts and Design announcing an event with Anetta Mona Chișa, another artist I admired, invited by Bogdan Rața. The gesture seemed so necessary and natural, for the students, for the local art scene, almost providential, as I had longed for this kind of interaction. So, I picked up the phone and called Bogdan, proposing a future collaboration with Calina along these lines. We ended up creating a much more elaborate program than we’d initially imagined. Through discussions, we discovered a shared perspective and a desire to bring artists closer to students, or vice versa, through informal, friendly, and personal meetings. The name “ARTISTHETEACHER” came to us instinctively: the invited artists were in the role of teachers, sharing life and career lessons, unique and deeply motivating personal paths. Without going into detail about this project, which remains a kind of starting point, I want to say that Bogdan was—and still is, just as in his creative process—extremely detail-oriented, rigorously exacting, and innovative across all fields. And, over everything, our shared passion for books was essential. That’s how the idea came about that, gathering our interests and enthusiasm, and of course with Liviana Dan, who’s been essential to the life and activities of the foundation for many years, we could manage a space with the scale and complexity of a Kunsthalle. I must also mention that from almost the beginning, Andreea Drăghicescu and Loredana Ilie joined us, forming a focused and efficient core, along with Vlad Cîndea, Sorin Ștefan Valea, and Gavril Pop.
Bogdan Rata: Kunsthalle Bega opened with a unique and fresh exhibition, Seeing Time, curated by Liviana Dan. Eleven students and recent graduates, at the very start of their careers, opened the space at its beginning. We started together and grew together. Kunsthalle Bega is an organic project that is still evolving, from which we all learn—artists, curators, students, the entire team. As a sculptor, I would say this is the most extensive and vibrant sculpture in public space I have worked on.
A. M: Among the artists who have had projects at Calina is someone significant to your journey, both as a person and as an artist: Romul Nuțiu. How was your collaboration with Nuțiu, and what can you tell us about the mark this space has left on our artistic landscape? Also, has this project, which reached a certain trajectory, found its place within what we now call Kunsthalle Bega? We’re speaking of a much larger space, redefined within the grid of art spaces, with blockbuster exhibitions.
A.C: I love Romul Nuțiu. I’m not quite sure how to speak about him, even though several years have passed since he left us. Romul saw in me the person I hope I’ve become. I find it difficult to look back with too much self-reflection, out of fear that I might discover something I hadn’t seen before. With his artistic and human generosity, genuine appreciation of young people, timeless personal youthfulness, curiosity, zest for life, a certain toughness, and almost spartan life discipline, he instilled in me the confidence that I was ready for the contemporary art space I was envisioning. Dreams are often pretexts for reality; they rewrite and rearrange themselves. Can this be learned?
Thanks to Romul, I met Liviana Dan. He was a kind of matchmaker, telling me, “You have to meet her, you share the same spirit; you’ll surely understand each other.” So I got in my car and drove to Sibiu for an exhibition opening at the contemporary art gallery at the Brukenthal Museum, led by Liviana together with Anca Mihulet, to fulfill his premonition. And I’ve remained in a wonderful friendship with her to this day—not just a collaboration.
Romul loved rituals and metaphorical moral lessons. He lived with an intensity and elegance I’ve rarely encountered—almost unique. In the waiting room at radiotherapy, we were the only ones flipping through art albums and magazines. The words “illness” or “pain” were never spoken. Because Romul embodied life itself—passionate and overflowing.
A.M: Since we are discussing exhibitions that require extensive infrastructure, I’d like to know what such a setup entails from your perspective.
B.R: A project in the Kunsthalle Bega space involves more than a year of preparations, ideas, concepts, applications, a perfectly synchronized team, demolitions, constructions, artwork production, documentation, mediation, workshops for children and the public… and always a publication, which requires several more months of laborious work. Without Liviana Dan, Andreea Draghicescu, Ugron Lajos, Loredana Ilie, families, and all the people who unconditionally support us, none of the above components would function. We are a team, and more importantly, we are friends. What best defines us, the scale of the exhibitions and the space, Kunsthalle Bega is a project that elevates the form of ideas to a new dimension.
A. M: Another component of the Kunsthalle Bega project is education. I would say that it runs parallel to the exhibition direction. You have experience in this role, including in cultural mediation, which you facilitate. It’s necessary and appreciated. The guided tours, artist presentations, and performances during the exhibitions make Kunsthalle Bega’s program and direction increasingly complex. What is the impact of these types of interactions on the public’s consciousness, and what responses do you receive from them?
A. C: I mentioned the “Artistheteacher” project, which was the starting point for this type of activity. At Kunsthalle, we’ve always worked with students or young artists, who have been involved in all our activities, actions, and projects. We consider fair compensation for their work essential. At the opening of our latest exhibition, Tara de foc, Andreea, a sculpture master’s student who had been involved from the first day, confessed that she hadn’t expected the process to be like this. She had thought each person would work separately on their own thing, but instead, it was a surprising display of empathy and collective collaboration, even among artists. There are spontaneous moments when you feel that what you’ve done was worthwhile.
Cultural mediators—and I say this honestly, I initially wrestled with this term, finding it pretentious and counter to its purpose—are trained from the start of each project. They’re part of our team and involved in all stages, from research to installation. They’re appreciated and sought after by visitors, loved by children, and vital to our projects.
If I hadn’t opened this art space, I’d probably have started a kindergarten. And with that, I’ve told you everything about one of the greatest joys Kunsthalle has brought me: workshops with children. I can’t quantify the impact on public awareness, but for some of the children with whom we’ve held workshops, it was their first trip outside their hometown. Their spontaneous exclamations of awe and enthusiasm as they discovered the space, their hugs, and their declarations like “this is the best day of my life” or “I want to be an artist, too”—these can’t be measured or calculated; they just exist ephemerally and give you the energy and motivation to keep going.
B. R: Kunsthalle Bega Box is our medium-sized project space. From the beginning, we envisioned it as an auxiliary gallery to present smaller curatorial interventions or solo shows. The Box has redefined the concept of space within space. It started with a Serban Savu exhibition called Equinox. It’s a space that balances and transitions the scale between the larger projects in the main Kunsthalle space and the proposals of artists invited to work in situ. We have already presented nine exhibitions here, and it was a real pleasure to collaborate with Anca Verona Mihuleț to publish the Kunsthalle Bega Box book with Kerber Verlag, a publication that gathers the entire exhibition program of the Box.
