MARIA SURDUCAN:
Standing at the Crossroad

A Virtual Gallery Talk by JCBA's 2023 Salzberg Resident
RECORDED LIVE WEDNESDAY JULY 26, 2023

Standing at the crossroad, what will you choose between love, power and comfort? If you find happiness, how far will you go to stop time? And if you achieve immortality, how will you cope with the memories?

The Eastern European storytelling tradition is full of "basme": reality-altering incantations, shaped as fairy tales. One of the recurring motifs is time-manipulation, designed to course-correct the world in unexpected ways, while offering psychological healing to the listener. In the shadow of the pandemic, and on the brink of economic and ecological collapse, Maria's project narrates the journey of an unnamed main character who must use all means available to find a way out –– be it personal or universal.

Join the talk to discover the beginnings of an ambitious project, spanning different media, from a live drawing concert to a tarot deck to, now, book art, in the frame of the JCBA's 2023 Helen M. Salzberg Residency.

MARIA SURDUCAN is an illustrator and comic book author in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She believes images are an imprecise way of translating reality, which, in a way, makes them more accurate than words. Her projects revolve mostly around mythology and fairytales. She is JCBA's 2023 Helen M. Salzberg Artist in Residence, and her proposed creative project for the Salzberg Residency, called "Timemongers," is influenced by all these fascinating things. https://mariasurducan.com/

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