Interactive installation, Bucharest, pubs, 1999, xerox copies, plastic drinking cups, coloured pencils

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The wall-based installation Figures (1999) proposes an experiment in which the public is invited to participate in art-making outside conventional art spaces. I made a series of self-portraits with the aid of the public without engaging them directly or giving a speech beforehand—I simply pasted unpretentious black-and-white photocopies with my face on the walls in small pubs and hung plastic cups filled with coloured pencils under them. On the wall, a short text invites: “Colour my face.”The installation must be viewed in the context of Romania's post-communist landscape at the end of the twentieth century, in which art is underappreciated, lacks promotion, and artists are responsible for resurrecting interest in art.  After the xeroxes had been coloured, I engaged the public in conversations about art, avoiding historical discourse but contextualising the artistic act itself, of expressing emotion and communicating ideas, as well as the human need and necessity to appreciate the beauty and complexity of life. (Excerpt from Notebooks, 2020 — A. F.)