After the “Sound of Silence” exhibition in Bucharest, the “Reflections” exhibition from Entree Des Artistes Gallery in France and the “Uprooting Experiment” exhibition from the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest, Kira Hagi, painter and actress, continues her series of art projects with the “Roots” painting exhibition at Senso Gallery in Bucharest, which will take place between October 28 – November 12.
Kira Hagi’s new exhibition, “Roots”, is a special one, as it represents a symbiosis between two forms of art, painting and poetry. Kira Hagi’s painting enter into a personal and deep dialogue with the poems of Ioana Mocanu.
The opening of the vernissage for the “Roots” painting exhibition of Kira Hagi in dialogue with the poems written by Ioana Mocanu will take place on Friday, 28 October 2022, starting with 18:30, at the first floor of the Senso Gallery in Bucharest (Calea Victoriei 12C).
“Any work of art is born from emotion. In the ‘Roots’ series, the emotion expressed through the chromatics and volumetric touch of Kira Hagi is doubled by the feelings of an intense experience put into verse by Ioana Mocanu. A insightful encounter which I invite you to witness”, said Steluța Roșca Stănescu (curator).
Passionate about everything related to art, Kira Hagi has studied Art at the International British School of Bucharest (IBSB) and has finished CIE Advanced Level Art & Design. She received a scholarship from the New York Film Academy, and three years later, she graduated in Acting for Film. Kira Hagi considers that the time spent in Los Angeles was the most creative period of her life, as she would paint weekly tens of paintings. After that, she realized that painting is a form of therapy, which helped her survive homesickness and longing for her family.
“I left my country thinking what any other young person thinks, chasing the dream of making it where others don’t even dare, believing that ‘in another country’, one may find the meaning of life on earth, that there will be a story just like in the movies (that is how I imagined it with my youthful eyes, protected by my family).
Four years later, tons of unsuccessful auditions, a few theatre projects, in which I started to put down roots, standing ovations, new entourages, a lot of new friends, but also lots of nights of longing made me have a personal epiphany: in fact, it doesn’t really exist an uprooting, because there will always remain a few roots in the ground, that will take the first opportunity and will come to life again.
The first chance I got, I came back to the country, and part of my new roots remained across the ocean, but it is all for the best, I will always be ‘home’ on two continents. And speaking of the resilience of nature, I received the gift of friendship from a person who was able to be born again, after a year of not getting up from the bed, needing to learn again to walk, after a painful loss in the family. It took a couple of years of fighting. This new reality, but she accepted that pain will be part of her life. Through her eyes, her art, and especially her words, I started to express myself through painting.
At only 28 years old, Ioana Mocanu is an artist, without any diploma, but one who creates as any artist does, or should do: from the heart. Without mercantile interests, without targets related to a lavish future, in the spotlight. Ioana, from my point of view, is a discovery that changes lives through the power of example, and which inspires through a creative enthusiasm and profound sensibility. Because of her, and her strength, this new collection of works came into being, which I invite you to see at the Senso Gallery”, said Kira Hagi.
At only 28 years old, the young artist Ioana Mocanu has lived enough experiences for two lifetimes, as such, her abilities are stretching into various fields, and the impact she has upon those who see her works of art is always momentous.
“I started writing as therapy for my thought and experiences, which, sometimes, I was feeling too strongly. When writing, I was freeing the emotions like in a secret diary that words were carrying, with their meanings, their feelings, their longing… What inspired me profoundly in Kira Hagi’s works was the meaning in itself of the “roots”, as an anchor for the self, which two years before, I felt I was loosing. Because of an accident, I went through a period in which, confined to a bed, I felt like my own feet were uprooting.
The “coincidence” was that my Father went somewhere higher than we are in the same day as the accident, and this was the reason, in fact, why my roots started to feel like loosing any kind of identity. The year in which I was confined to a bed was the year I started painting, writing, reading more than ever, learned to play the guitar, on my back… anything that helped me give some words to my silences from back then, through any means of expression. Now I understand that my roots are, probably, somewhere in Heaven, next to my Father, because I couldn’t explain in any other way how a friendship of this many years with an angel like Kira brought us here, today, together”, said the young artist Ioana Mocanu.