Floriama Candea
Floriama Candea's journey as an artist is deeply rooted in her childhood experiences and her unyielding curiosity about the world around her. Growing up in a small village near the Danube in Romania, Floriama was surrounded by the natural beauty of fields and forests, which played a crucial role in shaping her artistic perspective. Her initial encounter with art came through literature, where she was captivated by artist characters whose lives seemed to promise freedom and boundless creativity.
Floriama, Let's begin with talking about growing up years and life before you started exhibiting your art. What was happening in your life and How did art happen to you?
"I grew up in a small village near the Danube, in Romania, where I had great freedom to explore the fields, forests, and the local library. My first encounter with art, beyond the fact that I drew a lot as a kid, was through books, and the artist characters I found in literature whose promise of freedom seduced me, leading me to imagine an artist's life. Of course, it didn't have much connection to reality, but it planted the motivation in me to pursue an artistic career. I enrolled in a specialized high school and attended art university, where I studied painting, doing what was expected of anyone wishing to follow this path. Several years after graduating from college, I painted. When I encountered my first creative block, where painting suddenly seemed like a medium where I couldn't express myself enough, I actually returned to childhood experiences, to the small pleasures of that time, pressing plants, dismantling technological devices, rummaging through flea markets in search of small treasures, and gradually my practice transformed, incorporating these guilty pleasures."
Floriama's work today is a sophisticated blend of philosophical musings and scientific inquiry, drawing inspiration from both the organic world and mechanical realms. Her installations often explore the intersections of these mediums, creating a dialogue about the Anthropocene and humanity's place within the natural world.
Your work has a philosophical tangent with a scientific approach, now inspired by the natural and organic world or mechanical and electronic space, I am curious to know what makes you explore such an intersection of mediums and why blending such subjects is necessary for your intention regarding the Anthropocene speculations.
"I have always tried to stay true to my views about the world, to constantly question myself. I never had a clear intention to follow purely conceptual routes; instead, I was more interested in finding ways or mediums to express a poetic side of my thoughts. I believe in the positive change of our behaviors and wish for a world where we could live more sustainably, in a way that is fair to nature, of which we are an integral part, without being devoid of current or future technologies. My installations are generally not complicated; I do not use the latest technologies, sometimes I recycle components recovered from flea markets. The choice of these materials and of the scientific content, is related to creating immersive observation, spaces or experiences that the audience could understand in a fairly direct way but loaded with poetry."
Projects such as "Metabiosis," "Fold and Scaffolds," and "Uncanny Bodies" reflect Floriama's deep engagement with the organic and natural world through the lens of human perception.
Let's get on the evolution of each project starting from 2015 metabiosis, fold and scaffolds, to uncanny bodies. In each of these projects, you are speculating about the organic and natural world and their biological nature through a different narrative of a human mind that perceives with rather a more twistic narrative and juxtaposition. What are you intending here and what is it you wanted the audience to feel and think?
"There are indeed some recurring themes in my work. The idea that object identities are not static given but dependent on how we perceive, understand, and categorize them, for example. I have been interested in, and have tried to explore how we prescribe the identity or origin of new objects that we have never seen before. Encountering these objects seems very creative to me; based on our knowledge and experiences, we sometimes form speculations, even fictions, with new taxonomies marking a territory of desires and possibilities. Between reality, fiction, scientific truth, speculation, it sometimes seems that the boundaries are hard to draw; information circulates between categories of knowledge, always leaving gates through which imagination seeps in. Nature, with its integrated rules, which we usually know through science, mediated by technologies and conventions, always has an advantage over all the efforts we make to decrypt it. My early works aimed to capture those moments when the mystery of deciphering the image, of the systems, the rules that govern them, is blurred, leaving room for personal experience to seek meaning."
In "Panspecies" and "Contamination," Floriama delves into the fragile boundaries between natural and artificial elements. She challenges conventional perceptions by presenting natural elements alongside artificial prostheses, highlighting the complexity and interdependence of ecosystems.
In the project “Panspecies” and even “Contamination” you are again bifurcating the different aspects of our environment and their interrelation, but then you twist its narrative the other way around to what we generally perceive. So about this new narrative that you proposing you are in return building a new storyline. Why is it so and why do you think it's important to have such a shift in perspective, What are we failing to understand of the world through the lens of humanity at large?
"Panspecies" draws attention to what we identify as natural or artificial, focusing on the fragile boundaries between form and substance. Natural elements are reduced to the structural matter of their form, accompanied by artificial prostheses that modify their appearance and make them difficult to recognize. "Contamination" goes further by discussing not only the formal matrices by which we recognize objects and species but also the fact that the boundaries between species are inherently difficult to delineate. As long as humans coexist with the trillions of microorganisms that make up our microbiome, the differences between species are merely a convention that helps us navigate the world while attempting to maintain balance and normal exchange with other species. The environment consists of all other species, all the others without which we could not survive. The Anthropocene, this era in which it seems that humans are separated from the environment, from nature, is illusory. Humans are part of nature, and their survival is closely linked to maintaining a good relationship with the rest of the species. I believe it's crucial to introduce such a shift in perspective because it allows us to break free from our anthropocentric viewpoint and recognize the broader complexities of the world. Through the lens of humanity at large, we often fail to understand the intricate relationships and interdependencies that exist within ecosystems. By presenting an alternative narrative, I hope to highlight these connections and shed light on the significance of non-human entities in shaping our environment and our lives."
Her kinetic installations further emphasize the connection between humans and nature, animating objects through data derived from human physiology.
Your installations, on Kinestics, the subject of bioengineering is touched again. You are speculating about natural and inanimate subjects and their identities. The narrative that we have about what all narratives can be found. Why do you feel the need to excavate this?
"Animating objects through the interpretation of specific data from human physiology is certainly another attempt to speak about the exchange between humans and nature. About empathy, about the care we should show for our surroundings. My kinetic objects generally bring up the discussion about how we humans relate to life, otherness, and time, in an attempt to redefine our connection with nature, highlighting the ontological unity between humans and the environment. My need to make objects migrate (in our perception) from one category to another is related to emphasizing the idea of the continuous transformation of life, its instability, and the perishability of all its components, of fixed ideas. If we accept how everything is constantly changing, how collective the gesture of living is, of breathing the same air in the same environment, perhaps we would become more empathetic."
Floriama's recent works have become increasingly participatory, inviting audiences to engage with her art in dynamic and immersive ways.
Let's get on the interactive installations of your past and this year, Where participation in art leads to not only an immersive experience but also brings light on our relationship with nature and our surroundings. Such artwork highlights our symbiotic relation within the holistic ecology and ecosystem, however, the scientific quotient to it is new as you also touch upon the anthropology from the Anthropocene’s perspective. Your artwork is a reflection of our ongoing time, However, what is it that is inspiring and motivating you to continue the direction as it remains conceptual at its core while introducing an untraditional approach?
"Lately, my installations and objects have become increasingly participatory, acting as sort of bodily extensions that rely on the dynamic between control and its absence when our experiences are mediated by technology. What inspires me is the fact that in our daily lives, we rely more and more on technology: we count our steps, calories consumed and burned, heartbeats, oxygen levels, and so on. We interact with numerous sensors, rate places we like, and the IoT culture is becoming more and more prevalent and certainly more advanced. I've imagined a scenario where every action we take has a real-time response in the natural world, a response we can observe with the naked eye, a response that both moves us and makes us think about the responsibility we have in every type of relationship, with others, with nature, with technology."
Her creative inspirations are diverse, spanning sci-fi culture, speculative design, and contemporary science and technology news. She enjoys both music and the natural sounds of urban environments, often making recordings that document her surroundings.
Last but not least, Please take through the books and subjects that are interesting to you and in return inspire you to continue your speculative artworks. Perhaps you tune to the music that instills imagination and curiosity, or rather the films that help one understand the intentions you are fiddling with.
"I have always been a fan of sci-fi culture, speculative design, and news publications about science and technology. I listen to music and the natural sounds of the city where I live or the places I visit. I often make recordings documenting people or spaces without necessarily intending to use them in artwork. I try to stay up to date with the theoretical trends in art. Still, mostly, I find myself frequently scrolling through Instagram and pondering how difficult it is nowadays to know what exactly has influenced you in such a large influx of images and information, how difficult it is to call yourself still an author when you have access to an open source or crowdsource world."
Floriama Candea's work is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary exploration, merging art, science, and philosophy to offer new perspectives on our relationship with the world. Through her innovative installations, she invites us to reconsider our place within the natural order and to imagine a future where technology and nature coexist harmoniously.
Interview JAGRATI MAHAVER
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