ElectroPutere Mall marks 11 years of shopping and entertainment with a photo exhibition dedicated to the Electroputere Factory

On its 11th anniversary, ElectroPutere Mall, alongside the “Anca Poterașu” Gallery, invites visitors to take a visual journey into the history of the Electroputere factory, the flagship of the Romanian locomotive building industry.

The exhibition “Technologies of the past”, by artist Matei Bejenaru, presents images taken in the Electroputere factory, before the transformation of the space into today’s commercial and office park, together with a mapping of the Electroputere history. Over the last six years, the French real estate group Catinvest, which owns and manages ElectroPutere Parc, has invested more than 130 million euros, consolidating the commercial park’s position as the main shopping destination in Oltenia, as well as the main centre of innovation and technology in the region.

Visitors to the exhibition will also be introduced to an iconic image of the TTI laboratory in Iasi, symbolic of the “Between Two Worlds” documentary photography series begun in 2010, of which the selection of images in the exhibition is a part. Matei Bejenaru, one of Romania’s best-known visual artists in the field of contemporary photography and experimental film, describes the exhibition “Between Two Worlds” as an archaeology of the technologies developed in socialist Romania, carried out through photographic research that indexes and analyses their vestiges in the present – disused equipment, laboratories, representation models used in research that have lost their usefulness in the meantime or are on the process of disappearing. Along with these, the artist also represents models of advanced technological knowledge present in Romanian society today.

“At ElectroPutere Parc, we continuously expand our footprint and bring new brands to Oltenia’s main shopping destination and are constantly looking to create experiences and benefits that deliver more value to retailers and consumers. We respect the history of the place, and the exhibition Technologies of the Past invites visitors to get to know and recognize recent histories, as well as to discover pictures that are known and exhibited internationally, by one of the most important artists in the field of photography in Romania”, said Bertrand Catteau, President of Catinvest Group.

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The same event will also showcase a selection of digital artworks, NFTs being one of the newest blockchain technologies. The audience can view the works of the experimental art group kinema ikon, the first street-art collection NFT in Romania, digital works by artists Dragoș Bădiță and Megan Dominescu, reflecting on the latest and most innovative methods of production and presentation of contemporary art.

The ElectroPutere shopping centre in Craiova, inaugurated on 19 November 2011 in a former refurbished factory hall with the same name, was taken over in 2016 by the French real estate group Catinvest, which has invested over 130 million euros in its expansion. The shopping centre is now integrated into ElectroPutere Parc, a mixed retail-office project with a leasable area of over 90,000 square meters.

Further development plans include additional retail, and other services such as co-working spaces and aparthotels with a total investment budget of almost 60 million euro over the next 2-3 years, contributing to the development of the region.

The French real estate group Catinvest also owns and manages several shopping centres in Romania – Carrefour Orhideea and Cora Pantelimon in Bucharest and Carrefour TOM in Constanta – as well as in Eastern Europe – Auchan Savoya Park in Budapest and Tesco Borska Pole in Plzen. Catinvest is also active in France, in residential and shopping centers activities. In total, Catinvest owns and manages more than 525,000 square meters of spaces in France and Eastern Europe.