The works of Dan Mihălțianu (Bucharest, 1954) lie at the intersection between official and personal histories, following an artistic practice that explores the boundaries between art and politics with a discursive and analytical lens. For Mihălțianu, the study of the spheres of human existence, whether individual or collective, and the documentation of the events that disturb and modify the social fabric in a given time, are done from the perspective of an indifferent history, as the artist himself defines it. Indifferent history is attuned to the specificity of a context and the major events it undergoes as the result of specific encounters between the official and personal. The interview is setting the artist’s creation against the social and cultural background of the end of the 1980s in Romania, discussing the specific relationship between artist and society, between the real existing socialist reality and the endorsed one, promoted through the media automatisms of state propaganda. The interview centres on aspects pertaining to the cultural climate of the time, as well as on a series of works and installations in which the artist’s fascination for recycling and reusing obsolete materials (clothes, newspapers, found objects, envelops, packaging) crystallizes a working direction that responds to the everyday nonsense and the tensions between public and private.
Interview: Alina Șerban
Artworks & archive: © Dan Mihălțianu
Bucharest, 2022
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Camera & video editing: Dan Iordache
Subtitles: Diana Bularca
Music: Lucian Mețianu, Pythagoreis, 1970
Parkour & IP visual identity: Radu Manelici
Parkour Video visuals: Sebastian Pren
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Film produced in the frame of the projects “Uncensored Act” and “Performing 89”. With support from Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest.
The project is part of the national cultural programme “Timișoara—European Capital of Culture in the year 2023” and is funded by the Municipality of Timișoara, through the Center for Projects. Cultural project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.
The project does not necessarily represent the standpoint of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN cannot be held liable for the content of the project or the manner in which the outcomes of the project may be used. These shall devolve entirely on the beneficiary of the financing.