Curator Bojana Piškur, PhD, has chosen Ion Grigorescu’s performance Boxing (1977). You can see the video in the Arteast 2000+ collection.

“Born in Romania in 1945, Ion Grigorescu spent decades producing his art in the privacy of his studio. Not by choice − the political situation in Romania also entailed severe restrictions on the forms and contents of art. There are ten Grigorescu’s films from the 1970s in our Arteast 2000+ collection. The films are also performances, and filmed in the intimacy of his studio, they are intended only for the artist himself, since he performed without an audience. The ‘material’ used by Grigorescu to structure his films was his own body, usually naked. His body is at the same time his double, his enemy, and the demon he fights. This was the artist’s way of feeling alive. He often tortures and punishes his body to the limits of the bearable. This is underscored by the ‘poor’ environment and the poor quality of the film. Boxing is a performance that shows the artist’s frustration and trauma caused by social isolation. The technique he used is image layering, producing a double self-portrait. The artist has a boxing match with himself. While this boxing is fruitless, its tenacity and repetition represent a personal revolt against the restrictions imposed by the then society. And what does this work tell us today, in these days of isolation of a different order? What is the message of a body fighting itself in a lonely place without viewers? Is it just a symbolic gesture that remains at the individual level? Or might it be an intimation of a new, different era of profound isolation in a world where we’re most together when we are separated from one another?”