Irina Botea's exhibition at threewalls explores memory, utopia, and political reenactment through video works

Irina Botea presented the exhibition 'It is now a matter of learning hope' at threewalls in Chicago from April 26 to May 31, 2014. The show featured four videos examining collective memory and commemoration through strategies of role-playing and reenactment. The title references Ernst Bloch's philosophical treatise 'The Principle of Hope.' One work features Romanian artist Ileana Faur reciting texts by thinkers including Vilém Flusser, Karl Marx, Thomas More, and Constant Nieuwenhuys while standing in the ruins of Morii Island in Romania, an unfinished communist-era architectural project. Botea intentionally includes imperfections in performances, allowing interpretive agency. Another video, 'Art Historians – a conversation' (2014), created with cinematographer Nicu Ilfoveanu, shows two female art historians at the Bruckenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania discussing religiosity in art and artistic talent. The central work 'Impersonation' (2014) presents a reenactment of Abraham Lincoln's final hours based on surgeon Charles A. Leale's account, with four men dressed as Lincoln assuming different roles. The exhibition also included 'Photocopy/Fotócopia' (2011), featuring women using slogans from Spanish anti-government demonstrations. Botea's practice combines video, film, performance, and installation to reconfigure historical consciousness, often drawing from Romanian history. Her work employs cinéma vérité techniques while critically examining image-making institutions.