Maria Theresia Bastion, Building D

TIBISCVM

During their research trip to Timișoara, Peles Empire were inspired by two narratives they came across. One relates to a small statuette in a temporary exhibit at the Banat Museum. The figurine from the iron age was discovered in the commune of Topolovăţu Mare during preventive archeological research conducted by the museum’s staff —specifically Răzvan Găvan—on the construction site of the future BRUA pipeline, an interconnecting gas system within the region. Appearing in the extra-Carpathian Dacian area to which the work’s title makes reference, the role of these items remains debated among experts. Based on the visible marks  and incisions on the figurines, it is deemed they were used in the practice of magic, with the clay figurine being thrown into fire. When clay is being fired and hardened, it can survive for thousands of years. Another anchoring point of their work, was a walk in the city conducted by Tur de Arhitectură where discussions of the Ottoman history of the city and its invisible traces emerged as dwellings and vestiges of that era were burnt down. In both disparate narrative, fire plays a central role at the intersection between acts which destroy and those which create life.

Specific to their practice, Peles Empire approach history as a malleable material through a process of abstraction and copying which withdraws images from their original context. The artists created a new photomontage, mixing photographs of the found figurine and photographs of art materials from their studio with images of Peles Castle’s various “Moorish Salon” interiors as well as the “Turkish Salon” designed in an Oriental manner. Fashionable in many European countries at the time, such interiors were “reimported” or, rather, “copied” for Romania’s first king, Carol I, and represent a counterpoint to the original Ottoman traces erased in Timișoara a hundred years before. Printed on A3 color copies, the images are pasted together creating a vast floor work in one of the arches of Bastion Theresia, the largest surviving part of the fortification system built by the Habsburgs. The same space which was recently used as a music bar called Jazzissimo turns into a vast archeological site and cultural palimpsest. AR

Peles Empire’s work for the Art Encounters Biennial was possible with the support of Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) and Goethe-Institut București.