Cătălina Nistor, a visual artist known for her self-ironic approach to taboo subjects and clichés of thought, is the guest of the Contemporary Medium Association MAGMA in the B5 Studio A.i.R 2024* project. The goal of the ARTeast Foundation is to create a dynamic platform for collaboration and dialogue between the artist and the curator through its artist-in-residence programme. The first resident of the project, in collaboration with MAGMA cultural workers, invites the public to an open discussion to gain a deeper understanding of her artistic practice and the programme she is participating in.

UPDATE
As part of the Night of Museums event, instead of the announced classic artist-talk, the audience had the opportunity to participate in an informal discussion with Cătălina Nistor and the cultural collaborators from MAGMA. The public could see a pop-up exhibition featuring works by the first resident artist of the B5 Studio A.i.R 2024 project, presented both as objects and in projected images.
Cătălina Nistor’s work plan during the residency program is related to learning the Hungarian language. In this context, the event provided an opportunity for the audience to contribute to the artist’s Hungarian language learning project by suggesting words they consider important in their own professions.
The meeting also served as a platform for reaction and solidarity for the protest announced by the Culturmedia and Alfa Cartel unions against the discriminatory treatment by the Romanian Government towards employees of libraries and public collections. In solidarity, participants had the opportunity to embroider the words GREVĂ and SZTRÁJK on white armbands, thus expressing their support. The walls of the exhibition space also featured the manifesto formulated by the union.
The atmosphere was further enhanced by a music playlist featuring pop, rock, and rap songs, all centered around the theme of the strike.

I have been born in Craiova, and I have been working as an artist in Cluj since 2015.
Through a self-ironic approach, my artistic practice brings taboo subjects and clichés of thought to the surface.
I work with different mediums of expression, from painting or drawing to objects and publications in limited editions, experimenting with various reproduction techniques over the years. In the last four years, I have initiated two collaborative publications, one of which is an ongoing project.

*After the curatorial turn, artistic content is created and mediatised on a number of levels. The curator takes a more creative and active role – working not from outside the artistic process, but from an
internal perspective. And the artist, who has long been a curator of him/herself and of other artists, of other contents and platforms, is always finding new roles for him/herself. Contemporary art transcends the context of the exhibition, but it does not abandon its original forms of realisation, and collaboration is a recurring motif at many junctures.
It is this complex set of relationships that the B5 Studio’s 2024 AiR programme attempts to capture. In addition to the traditional framework of residency programmes, our aim is to explore different models of Collaboration.

Our basic idea is that dialogue and collaboration open up possibilities whereby actors are able to transcend the context (1+1= MANY).
Bartha József és Ungvári-Zrínyi Kata

The project is co-financed by the National Cultural Fund**.
** The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund. The NCF is not responsible for the content of the project or the way in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely up to the beneficiary of the funding.
We thank Bioeel and Oracler for the support.