EUGEN RAPORTORU: #JESUISMAHALA
The visual artist Eugen Raportoru challenges the conventions of the art gallery with the immersive exhibition #jesuismahala where visual imagery, music, scent, and community interweave. The upcoming exhibition – on display at the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest between February, 20 and May, 20, 2025 – is a profound exploration of memory, identity, and art, rooted in the lost world of the mahala.
Through a fusion of painting, installation, and performance, Raportoru reconstructs his childhood landscape, not as mere nostalgia but as a living, breathing space of cultural introspection. At its core is The Last Supper, a symbolic centerpiece that, like the surrounding works, relies on suggestion rather than direct narration. Echoing ancient Roman banquets and the evocative assemblages of Daniel Spoerri, Raportoru’s exhibition resurrects a world on the verge of disappearance, offering not just a reflection on the past but a reconfiguration of the present and a vision for the future.
The exhibition opens on February 20, 2025, a date of profound significance in the Roma history as it marks the 169th anniversary of the Abolition of Roma Slavery in the Romanian Principalities. The opening event will take place at 17:00 at MNȚRplusC, the exhibition space of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant.
#jesuismahala is supported by the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture, Roma Education Fund, Roma Entrepreneurship Development Initiative, Roma for Democracy, Roma Foundation for Europe, and Medist.
The project team is led by Ecaterina (Katy) Raportoru and includes Ilie Raportoru, Valeriu Lazăr, Ana Daniela Sultana, and Ilina Schileru. The exhibition’s accompanying video is directed by Andrei Vlădean, with a cinematography by Marius Comiza and Costin Șovagău.
Dalina Bădescu, art critic and historian:
“The encounter between Eugen Raportoru’s Mahala (Suburb) and the MNȚR+ gallery is no mere coincidence. More precisely, it aligns with the broader project of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant. The quest for the ineffable, for the profound meaning hidden behind everyday precarity, and for the Eden that resonates beyond the ruins of the present—these are all part of the vision Horia Bernea instilled in the MNȚR’s program, as he created a space that operates beyond the conventions of museums or contemporary art galleries. Here, time can be revisited, purified, and distilled to its essence—whether speaking of the rural world or the suburb, itself a hybrid at the border between rural and urban, preserving gestures while altering stylistics. In this space of authentic postmodernity and simultaneous times, we find Eugen Raportoru.
On one hand, he relives his childhood—deeply personal yet referential for all of us—while on the other, he proposes a complex and contemporary artistic construct, one that, despite prevailing trends, remains profoundly human. His work does not merely create a credible scenography but also an ironic and self-ironic one, questioning the very notion of an art gallery—a space that imposes a certain distance between artist and viewer, whether through intimidation or a voluntary suspension of communication. Instead, Raportoru invites the audience to a serious introspection on the nature of art. By returning to its primary and primordial forms, he brings together visual imagery, dance, music, scent, and, most importantly, community.
Although the exhibition’s experience is individual—resembling an investigation of a crime scene, where time has been extracted from its fluidity to remain frozen in a mysterious configuration—the true reference is a shared experience. The remnants of a feast, reconfigured into an installation à la Daniel Spoerri or, looking further back, citing Roman banquets from ancient frescoes and mosaics, alongside a looping video performance in an adjacent space, and the deliberate absence of contemporary sounds to allow the echoes of the past to vibrate—all serve an almost magical role: resurrecting the past, a mahala that defines not only the artist but an entire world now in limbo.
The paintings in the exhibition encompass all forms of memory: from clear, identifiable images rooted in lived experience—family portraits and the artist’s self-portrait in his studio—to those where form is reduced to movement, speed, and pure cultural reference, as seen in the banquet hall. The Last Supper serves as the exhibition’s focal point, relying—like the other paintings in the same space—on suggestion rather than description. Though at first glance, Raportoru’s exhibition seems to tell a story, its narrative is purely hypothetical and abstract. It can only be experienced simultaneously, as all times converge—not only to preserve the past but also to configure the present and give meaning to the future.”
Eugen Raportoru (b. 1961, Bucharest, Romania) is a Romanian visual artist, decorated in 2024 by the Romanian President Klaus Iohannis with the Order “Cultural Merit” in the rank of Knight, Category C – “Fine Arts”. Eugen Raportoru is a graduate of the National University of Art in Bucharest, Department of Painting (BA in 2009 and MA in 2011), Eugen Raportoru is a member of the Romanian Union of Fine Artists since 2010, receiving the prize for painting from it on several occasions. His exhibition activity is extensive and includes, in addition to an impressive number of solo and group exhibitions, participations in biennials, salons and art fairs both local and international. His artistic practice focuses mainly on two modes of visual expression: painting and installation. In 2020, his installation entitled “Childhood Room” was acquired by the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania.
In 2022, his exhibition “The Abduction from the Serai”, commissioned by ERIAC, was presented as a collateral event of the 59th Venice Art Biennale, and in the country he opened the exhibition on the deportation of Roma, “Gelem, Gelem, Samudaripen” at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasantry. In 2023, he opened another landmark solo exhibition – “Eugen Raportoru. Patrimony”, at the Marble Hall on the ground floor of the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania.
He has also exhibited at the ICR London, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Vatican under the aegis of UNESCO, the Ethnic Museum in Oslo and Stockholm, in many art museums in the country (Bucharest Municipal Museum, National Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art “Pavel Șușară”, Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Bistrița-Năsăud Museum Complex, Museum of Visual Art Galați, Art Museum Constanța, Gorj County Museum “Alexandru Ștefulescu”, etc. ), as well as in numerous galleries and art centers.