Artist's corner: meet visual artist Dorina Horătău

Over 120 personal and group exhibitions organized in museums, cultural centers, cultural institutions, galleries and alternative spaces have had the name Dorina Horatau on their promotional materials. BR has discovered the artist during an Art in Bucharest tour, in her studio, where several pieces of her work were in progress or brought back from exhibition.

By Oana Vasiliu

Who is Dorina Horatau?

She’s a visual artist who has several questions and who works with pleasure and stubbornness in arts and textile design domain. In each and every exhibition I had, I followed the wire, being impressed by the life that this wire has, from the stem to fiber optics, from a traditional knitting to the latest fabrics, from the common curtain to upholstery. I like to think that the greatest problems of the space could be resolved, in difficult situations, with a single wire – such as the Ariadne’s Wire which saves us from the labyrinth. Also, she leads the Textile Arts and Design department of the National University of Arts Bucharest.

What does the experiment in textile art mean and what are your experiments which have become exhibition objects?

In every piece of work I am trying to build a personal speech, organized as expressive and aesthetic around handmade objects using fiber – installation (textile), textile object space, ambient, “entity or textile presence”; I also use the classic working materials and less conventional ones, which requires you to (re)discover.

You brought from your childhood house pieces that you transformed in works of art. How does the public react? Are these traditional Romanian objects considered fashionable?

Some years ago, we had to sell our grandparents lifetime achievements in order to assure our family here in Bucharest. For a while, I felt like I was uprooted so I needed to find something to keep the connection with my past. For this to happen I saw the grass from my parents’ house, I collected it as a memory, thus transforming it into a series of fabric-carpets which kept and rememorized the place where I grew up. These tapestries were weaved with Persian knots, being the subject of the exhibition entitled “…after grass…” / “…dupa iarba…” which took place in 2009 at the Galateea Gallery.

What’s coming next?

Currently, my thoughts are driven to an exhibition dedicated to manually manufactured paper and free author drawing. I see it as a seeking gesture which can interrogate the visual creator, I, about the artistic trends of 2015-2016.

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