ULU contemporary art imagined a new contemporary art institution in Iasi, Romania, where the traditional centres of art have been increasingly brought into question by the proliferation of large-scale exhibitions worldwide. The cultural life of Iasi has become symptomatic of this expansion: home to one of Romania’s three current art biennials and a major art college, Iasi developed its own systems, which nevertheless remained dependent on the support of civil society and international public funding. The time had come for peripheral sites like these to operate independently from the international financial support that is typical of NGO-led art centres. ULU contemporary art aimed to act as an independent art space, while supporting itself with commercial gallery activity, in order to offer an alternative way of considering how an art platform could function in the region.

The project explored the different structures of desire enabled by particular peripheral spaces. This projection for a new form of institution in Iasi could have set up a new set of priorities, in the ongoing discourse between centre and periphery. In her book Art & Its Institutions, curator Nina Montman posed questions such as: “What do we actually expect from an art institution? What do we want an institution to stand for? What desires does an institution in the art field produce?” Historically, these questions have been explored within the art world from a very restrictive angle, and have thus remained very specific to a certain space of contemporary art production. Our idea, located in London, but imagined for Iasi, was to create a general criticality towards the ongoing phenomena of network institutions, where the desires of a specific place become a common and shared aspiration, enacted by individuals.

The exhibition was a preliminary step towards considering the impact of such an imagined reality, but also acted as a case study in which to consider how peripheral localities can attempt to stabilise themselves. The new institution was built for the first time inside The Friends of the Divided Mind. The gallery’s staff operated during normal working hours, and hosted an exhibit by emerging artist Vincent Faciu. ULU also commissioned a series of limited-edition multiples from four international artists. These multiples were exhibited within the gallery’s office space and were available for sale during the run of the exhibition.

Artists include:

Curated by Preeti Kathuria, Jesse McKee and Livia Pancu