Sabina Ulubeanu is one of the multi-faceted artistic personalities of her generation. Her 25-year creative career ranges from composition, photography, musicology and experimental performance to artistic director of a festival of contemporary music and art.
Her work includes chamber, symphonic, choral, and multimedia works that have been performed in Europe, the United States, and Asia, at major festivals, have won awards in national and international composition competitions, and have been broadcast by public broadcasters. Since 2006 Sabina Ulubeanu adds photography to her musical experience, being interested in bringing together space, time and memory, elements that unify the music and the visual arts. In 2011 she completed her PhD studies with the thesis „The Function of Memory in the Construction of Musical Time”, a theme that represents the artistic manifesto of the composer. Her photographs have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Romania and Europe and are in personal collections in Romania, Austria, Spain, France, Germany, Canada and the USA. In 2021, together with mezzo-soprano Claudia Van Hasselt and composer Amen Feizabadi, he realized an extensive anthropological research and creative project in the historical region of Banat. The transmedia music theater performance The Unified Voices of Banat premiered in Berlin in November 2021 and continued in Bucharest and Timișoara in 2022. As a collaborator of AREAL space for choreographic development, she was one of the facilitators of BioAREALab Romania, Bucharest, Contemporary Dance and Music Residency in August 2022. In February 2023 she was the winner of the project competition of Composers Union Romania – a commission for a new work for violin and chamber orchestra, and in May 2023 the winner of the residency call Eufonic Motions – Bergen, Norway.
Curatorial text:
The feelings surrounding objects were always fascinating to me. Those stories contain small Universes that travel through time directly to the public, in various forms.
The Violin was naturally a first choice for me. As a composer and trained musician, I can only have a curious yet critical view on movie scenes involving musical instruments and their usage. I watch for the correct positions, the music performed, the general approach both in the story and in the concrete usage of the object. In our digital era, a musical instrument is related strictly to the “analog” world, thus immediatly transporting us in a different dimension, the cultural heritage arround it – material and immaterial, being obvious and endearing. Bringin the violin into the exchibition, offers the viewer the posibillity of making sound, mind and soul connections to both arts.
So is the case with The Cane. The journey back to memory lane is present through the significance of the object, the aid for old age, but also through the watch, introducing a type of magic at the simple sight of the object, which is again a direct link to one’s physicality. The book translated into film, Childhood Memories by Ion Creangă, is a very cinematic one, even if today’s kids won’t relate to it as much as the older generations. But its connection to heritage is tangible, poignant and full of emotions.
The next object that holds a huge significance to me is Cristian Nemescu’s Camera. Octavian Nemescu, Cristian’ father, was my PhD advisor before and after the tragedy hit. Cristian and me were born in the same year and his death was a real shock for our generation, especially after his amazing short films and knowing he was working on California Dreamin’. Being witness to his parents pain all these years is part of this generation’s transformation form young artists to fully gownups and it shaped who we are now. A few months after his passing, a screening was organized at the Studio cinema in Bucharest, finishing with Marilena de la P7. I left the cinema in tears and walked home unable to stop, for one hour. This is why Cristian’s camera is one of those objects impregnated with all the hopes of an entire generation and the remembrance of the fact we are all transitory and the absurd of life is one of the main topics that make us create, in order to fight time.
Moving on to the Sugar Bowl, it was touching for me to recognize it from the film Felix and Otilia, based on the novel “Otilia’s Enygma” by George Călinescu, that we studied as a mandatory novel in the highschool curriculum. The object contains a huge part of history in itself, the presence on set adding a new layer of in this palimpsest of memories. As in the cae of Cristian Nemescu’s camera, it should be a starting point for the younger generation to look for the movie and open a window towards understanding the evolution of Romanian Cinematography.
The next two objects, The Tablecloth and the Plate, though holding different meaning for the people donating them, may take us in two wonderful directions of the Romanian heritage and cinema. When investigating the culturale heritage form an anthopological point of view, any documentarist team will be invited to a meal, or at least a little snack, on a table covered by the typical flowers design table cloth and the old plates belonging to the family, a setting that opens hearts and minds and makes the conversation flow, so the project comes to life.