Gianina Cărbunariu – associate artist of Temps D’Images 2014

Gianina Cărbunariu’s theater is from and about the hot moments of social life in today’s Romania – even when the subjects of her performances apparently belong to the past – and there are few artists that manage to connect so deeply with the hidden rhythms of the present. In 20/20 (2009), five Hungarian and five Romanian actors reconstructed, at the boundary between fiction and documentary, the origins of ethnic conflict in Târgu-Mureș, since 1990 – still a major taboo within the community. Exceptionally, Roșia Montană on a physical and political line (2010, together with Radu Apostol, Peca Ștefan and Andreea Vălean) anticipated the national debate around mining, that broke out a year later, while X mm out of Y km (2011) and Typographic Capital Letters (2013) completely changed the perception of the communist experience and Sibiu Tiger (2012) questioned the national obsession of the European image. Last year, Solitarity talked about the dissolution of ideas like community and family, and in 2014, De vânzare / For Sale is the first theatrical representation of the shale gas dispute. Gianina Cărbunariu is the most constant playwright diagnosing our social diseases, a path that still needs further research.

Iulia Popovici, performing arts critic

Meeting with Gianina Cărbunariu on Monday, November 10th, 16:00, at La Cizmărie Cafe.