Jana Astanov interviews Viviana Druga.
Featured photo Viviana Druga, Art and Control, Beijing, China, 2017
CREATRIX Magazine: How did it all start? What made you become a performance artist?
Viviana Druga: My upbringing. My failures in being good at life as a teenager.
I grew up in Romania in a small city called Făgăraș and its surroundings Țara Făgărașului. In the city I would go to German school and in the countryside in Voivodeni I would spend all my vacations. I did not speak German at home, it was just my mom’s desire to make another form of education accessible to us, one that would place us further away from Russia and communism. Even though we had all Russian literature at home which was very well praised, there was this inherent fear of the communist regime because of all the atrocities: intellectuals in prison, industrialization of the rural markets, collectivization of the goods, animals being taken away from their owners and placed in a common house, our uncles the Hașu brothers being killed by the regime and named traitors because they did not want to comply and flew to the mountains where they lived in earth homes (Țara Făgărașului resistance). These just to name a few…The overall intention was uniformity: everyone owning the same, no one sticking out, same Dacia car, same kind of box-shaped apartments, same food, same clothes, but in reality the ones deciding the new rules were more privileged and the rest were being controlled and surveilled just like in Orwell’s Animal Farm.
As an intelligent and highly spiritual person, my mom suffered a lot for being a woman during communism, and the psychological wounds would not heal in the transition to democracy after the 1990´s. Her story is the story of a woman, the first generation to have an university degree who became a director of an agricultural bank later in her career – a position that allowed her to protect the investments of the peasants. She was a stunning leader but the local mafia did not like the decisions she took favoring the peasants and she ended up losing her position. It was a difficult family drama and I got completely sucked in as a kid. As a result of this, and my puberty away from nature, I experienced my first deep depression at age 13. This is where it all started for me. One day, suddenly, I got ripped out from the paradise that the countryside represented since I was a small kid and could not enjoy nature anymore. A pitch black couple of years followed that. This exact phase constituted the base for me becoming an artist. The isolation I felt from the real world made me discover another realm, the inside one. At the beginning it was not a pleasant sight but due to the changes that I pushed on myself through the philosophical readings and a quite dangerous experiment with drugs, I finally came back to life again around 16.
CXM: Were there any people who influenced you in the choice of performance as a way of expression?
VD: When I started performing I did not know that what I was doing was called performance art. I discovered it through my partner at that time when I was 20 and would go to his school library in the art academy and read about performance art there. I discovered the big 60-70´s names in performance art and that was a shocking, but also very rewarding thing to encounter as their work resonated so deeply with my experience. My first real performance happened in 2006 and was coming out of an impulse to act out in that particular moment. It happened that I was in Bucharest at the time in the University Square where the revolution had happened back in the 90’s. The President of Romania, Traian Băsescu was signing autographs and around him there were loads of journalists with their stands representing their news media. It was the national free press day. I walked past a stand from Cațavencu – a newspaper I enjoyed reading due to its satirical nature and there was a caricature of Ceașescu the ex- dictator itself there. I took the image and went to Băsescu to get it signed while wearing a red balaclava on my head and face with only my eyes visible. He looked at me and was a bit suspicious, then I noticed the snipers on the roof of the building pointing us. I asked him to sign it, he did without looking at the paper he was signing it on, and then I thanked him and walked away. Police came towards me, with the intention to escort me out of the President area, but I was not questioned about anything so I left triumphant with the autograph in my hand. It was all not planned or calculated. It happened. It was spontaneously orchestrated.
The images of me and the president were taken with my camera by my partner at the time. I discovered the power of action and its proper documentation. The power of the camera was infinite for me from this point on.
CXM: Your performance art practice explores ritual, religious practices, paganism, there is also a very pronounced connection to nature as the life giving force. Can you please tell me how your upbringing in a rural Transylvania, in an Orthodox Romania influenced your personal mythology?
VD: My upbringing had a massive influence upon becoming who I am today. It was the countryside where I would spend all summer vacations – that was the first nature experimental place. There, in comparison to the city, were infinite possibilities to explore: cold rivers rolling big stones from the mountains, trees to climb and call home for a day, hardly any people around just the peasants minding their work on the land. Me and my sisters were basically alone on a human-free never ending landscape. Also my grandparents were easy-going with our education so they would let us do whatever we pleased all day long. I remember wandering for a full day from one village to the next, stopping by the river, where we would be singing all day long just like in a singing contest with microphones made out of wood.
Being in the village Voivodeni enabled me to participate in the seasonal celebrations. There were the specific ones taking place in winter: colindatul where we would sing carols from door to door holding a self-made instrument with bells and images with Jesus and Mary on them called viflaim. Although the text of all colinde is concerned with the events of the Nativity, certain elements of the folk rituals performed around Christmas are probably pre-Christian in origin, having their roots in the Roman Saturnalia and pagan rituals related to the winter solstice and soil fertility. There were also the summer festivities of sânzienele which correspond to Midsummer Nights Dream. We would sleep with sânziene plants under our pillow to dream of our husbands to be.
photo: Rita Couto
There was an Orthodoxism infused upbringing with very strong pre-Christian roots coming from the village where I spent lots of time, which was my father’s side of family with strong mystical Orthodox values based on visions and trance coming directly from my mother (originally from Moldavia, the Eastern side of Romania) that formed the core line of my upbringing. My mother would sit in a church for hours praying. The lights were dim and lots of incense would make everything blurry. You cannot imagine the atmosphere unless you went to a church like this. Very medieval, nothing to do with the 45 minutes mass of a Lutheran Church. These types of churches inspired me to reenact the atmosphere in CONFESSIONALE solo show 2019. This and the idea of confession. A secret being placed safe in another person’s heart.
CXM: What strikes me about your practice it’s the totality of the experience within the environments you create that include performance, installation, photography. Can you please explain your process in creating your multidisciplinary works?
VD: The environments I create encompass photography, a mix of sculptural elements set up in an installation and, last but not least, binding all together, the performative element. I feel one medium is not enough to express a certain state of mind or to bring the viewer into the atmosphere of one´s memories for example. Performance art is an amazing all-powerful-medium to arrive there. The rest is the installation basically sustaining the performative act that calls for a setting, a home.
My last solo-show included a confessional chair realized conceptually by me in collaboration with artist Tiberiu Bleoanca, who in creating it was directly influenced by ancient Romanian symbolism, quite visible in the engravings he used. Along with that there was a photography series portraying spiritual leaders women replacing men and vice-versa. Mohammed as a woman. A queer Maria. Along with this a wall painting resembling the iconic blue Voroneț Church from Romania, a blue altar with a mixed earthly elements and tarot cards created by myself and costume designer Tata Christiane. A telephone streaming a 45 minutes biographical narration. A toaca (Romanian church techno basically in the form of a wood and hammers being hit simultaneously) sounds and Orthodox priest chants. All this in one huge Room at Galerie im Turm in 2019 in the CONFESSIONALE show.
At the end of April this year, I am preparing a Sauna made out of clay where you can strip off your clothes and confess to a stranger. Starting from the Finnish proverb which states that ‘There are only two things sauna cannot cure: death and a broken heart’,
SAUNA CONFESSIONS is thought as an ecofeminist reworking of Christian rites of baptism and confession – exorcizing sin and trauma to reclaim our selves. ‘Sauna’ is the site of purgative yet everyday ritual drawn from the shamanic culture of pre-Christian Finland. An Orthodox baptism ritual in Transylvania consists of 2 parts: exorcism and blessing, collapsing the good-evil duality, integrating the darkness rather than banishing it – recognizing its innate divinity. SAUNA CONFESSIONS hands control of the re-birthing process to the participant. It reverses the psychoanalytic process – modernism’s analogue of Christianity – whereby the participant seeks control over their narrative through the mediating authority of the analyst. Instead of attaching to a narrative, we accept, release, and transform.
CXM: Some of the most pronounced themes of your work are issues concerning feminism. Please tell us how becoming a mother changed your approach to art making, and also how it evolved your perspective on larger socio-political issues.
VD: We met in N.Y. while I was performing CHOICE at Grace Exhibition Space run by Jill McDermid and Erik Hokanson, two very beautiful people I got to come across through my dear friend Alex Chellet, the son of the impressive performance artist Eugenia Chellet.
I came to N.Y. knowing that I would have to make a massive decision. I was pregnant at that time. Very early but also very pregnant and even though inside of me I knew what I had to do, I did not want it to be solely my decision so I placed myself into the community. I made the audience decide for me.
My question at that time was: Is it possible to make a decision within a collective? Is it better to revert to community opinion or has this method failed? Can social structures perform instinctively within the idea of collective thought or within a physical space? Using the format and the psychological dimensions that exist within a traditionally formatted game (a game which is based on competitive teams) – I played the role of the mediator in the game, albeit a vulnerable role because they are asking for guidance within a controlled environment of polarity. Said and done. The audience made the decision for me. The pro-life wall was a total YES. It enforced my decision, it made me arrive at its core.
This was the beginning. Another performance happened later on in my pregnancy in Holland. Until the baby was born, even though my body had become a home for the emerging being, I still had total control over it. I crawled while being very pregnant on the street in Holland with cars passing by.
After becoming a mother, the decisions I take involve another human, so they are co-directed by both parties. My body is still mine yet completely tied to the existence of another being so in a way it also belongs to the newly existing being. From here all sorts of interdependent situations arise. It is a decision concerning one´s total life and art making as well. I am not alone, I have replicated, I am two. We are.
CXM: What are some of your notable past projects?
VD: It would be a political one. Those are the ones needed right now when Europe is at war.
My first trip to China in 2017 I consider a milestone in my engagement with performance art because of its social and political necessity. Two weeks before my trip to Beijing was supposed to start, where I was invited to take part at OPEN international performance art festival, the festival was canceled by the state. We had the option to come anyway or cancel our trip. I decided to go. In the meantime the festival was reorganized in a new gallery and was supposed to happen in secret. We did not tell anyone that it was taking place. No social media anyhow in China, but no friends from home were supposed to know either. When the two day festival started, I was surprised to find Reuters photographers covering the event. They were also not allowed to post anything until we all came back home safe. These conditions reminded me a lot of communist Romania where I grew up but was not old enough at that time to have a say. Therefore an energetic enthusiasm of being still able to perform in China started to take shape inside of me, like a volcano ready to burst.
I arrived in Beijing a few days before the festival started so I had a bit of time to digest the new environment. It was my first time in China and it all seemed under construction. Bricks everywhere left in front of houses, some with a note on them, some without. That will be my performance material. So I started asking neighbors if I could borrow their bricks. The answer was no. In the meantime I discovered my host had a lot of bricks as well so I got the approval to use them. With the help of Cloud (tattoo artist) and his van we transported them beforehand to the gallery. 165 bricks signed and numbered. That was supposed to be my Chinese house, an enclosed space within a space /the gallery where we were forced to perform with closed doors with no communication to the public.
The Audience helped me carry bricks inside the gallery and build my house. I placed myself inside with my head down and my behind sticking out. My buttocks were then revealed and Cloud marked them with two words on each side: ART and CONTROL in Mandarin. The wall was then broken with my head. Release. Free Art from State. Art is like breathing. No Art is Death…
This performance is very well connected with the Passive Guerrilla performance done in 2006 with the president of Romania. This is how it all started and the performance I did in China is a continuation of this exact attitude. Not submission but a reflection of the present state without dampening. This is where actionism can change how the world looks. It has that power.
CXM: If you were to come up with a sentence or a piece of wisdom for other women to include in their lives what would that be?
VD: Embrace the fear; there is truth in it and once conquered, there is unimaginable power.
CXM: As a character in art history, what impact do you think you’ve had? How have you changed the ways in which people look at art?
VD: I let posterity decide this.
I hope more women get a well deserved place in art history. In a world in which the work that women do is mostly invisible – mothering others has never gotten any prize has it? and well acclaimed performance artists mention their decision not to have children for that matter – it is hard to take the decision to have a child and continue the work to be a successful performance artist. But, I do believe it is possible. Here I am talking about motherhood when the question is about my place in art history.
Maybe, motherhood – itself as a performance – shall have a place in art history. Here I said it.
I saw my own birth as such so I reenacted the last 20 days before birth as a performative countdown till the moment it all disappeared into blissful light just like the Chinese artist disappearing into its own painting.
CXM: What are your future art plans? Where can we see your next piece?
VD: My next solo-show is at Galerie Saalbau Berlin, opening on the 29th of April 2022 with an on-going performance. There will be a large scale installation there that people can interact with. It’s about guilt, the world getting hotter and hotter and war.
I will also have guest performers interacting with the space on several events planned over May and June so please check my page for that: https://vivianadruga.com/part/news/
About Viviana Druga
photo by Erika Svensson
Viviana Druga is a Romanian ritualista based in Berlin who uses performance and photography and installation based work as her main forms of expression. She was born in Transylvania – Romania. Until the age of 12 she would visit together with her sister the grandparents living near the Carpathian mountains. Her childhood was influenced by the free life of the mountain area and the Christian – orthodox Mysticism brought in by her mother. Before she left Romania in 2008 she was predominantly interested in the social side of art, performing activist art actions in Bucharest such as infiltrating the international biennial, photographing herself with the president on the street while being dressed like a guerrilla, and convincing people to pose in their swimsuits in winter at a busy intersection where an off-limits park had been constructed. Since she moved to Berlin, she has been investigating the personal, poetic side of performing, the new dimensions of reality and capturing that reality through photography – using art as a magical activity that can help the subject / audience discover new dimensions of oneself.
Viviana Druga shares an interest in the resurgence of feminine aesthetic and knowledge forms through occult and ritual practices connected to nature sourced by her rural upbringings suffused with pagan culture. She combines a ‘bottom-up’ transformative poetics of lived experience and street politics with tactical aesthetic formalism and explores techniques of representation and reality from performance art to combine collective and individual ritual with transformative politics. Sam Williams
About the interviewer:
Jana Astanov is an interdisciplinary artist, a writer, a poetess and an independent curator born in Mazury Lake District of Poland and currently living in the Shawangunk Mountains, in upstate New York. She is a founder of CREATRIX Magazine: www.creatrixmag.com, portal for creative expression focused on art, activism and spiritual practice. Her work includes performance art, photography, sound art, and installation. Together with her partner Niko van Egten she co-created an electronic music group ASTRALOOP featuring her poetry in dark electronic arrangements. She is also the author of five collections of poetry: Antidivine, Grimoire, Sublunar, The Pillow Book of Burg, and Birds of Equinox.
