Adrian Golban

Interstice

September 7 - 17, 2021

Gordon Snelgrove Gallery

Open to the public: Monday - Friday, 11:00am - 4:00pm

Interstice uses a range of found objects and materials and builds on the associations embedded in their physical presence and symbolic potential to reveal my trust and enthusiasm for the ways memory, my diasporic identity, and my current realities are being integrated in an evolving sculptural language. I am an artist from Romania who has lived in Canada for almost a decade. When I moved to Canada, I discovered new approaches to making art and determined that I wanted to complete an MFA degree here, looking to open more doors. One of the directions of contemporary art that interested me was a focus on signifiers of identity which I recognized as a suitable niche to combine my traditional skills in a contemporary milieu. This transition has posed many challenges and opportunities and I decided to assume the role of a visual actor, a player and freely jump from one idea to another to give me the satisfaction of the new and feed my curiosity about the unknown. For me, the MFA program has been a place where I could ask, Who Am I? and experiment with new ideas; it has been an artistic environment where mistakes were encouraged in order to find my own path. Interstice reveals that I am a multitude of experiences. It is a show of literal and metaphorical self-portraits that combine memories and experiences specific to my life in Romania with experiences in Canada. In creating this work, I rediscovered my own voice in a new place.

Image credit: Carey Shaw