​​Mircea Suciu – Meat

Before the vegetarian fashion came around, the pig ruled. The culinary habits of the Romanian during communism saw in meat a sign of prosperity. Before ’89, our parents had one obsession throughout the year: how to get meat. The official diet proposed moderation in the name of the sacrifice for the community; this turned out to be just a fiasco. The Romanians were growing pigs illegally and then killing them on the Ignat day (traditional day for killing pigs, at the beginning of December). This is an ancient traditional practice. Some historians took this story so far, as to say that the pig and the sheep are the secrets to the Latin permanence in the space between the Carpathians and the Black Sea. A pig is easy to grow and it gets a family through the winter. It can also help during a siege. Sheep and all the customs associated with raising them, made the Wallachian refuse history and retreat to the mountains.

Mircea Suciu proposes a series of images, in which the carcass is being butchered, packaged, and labeled as a sign of the primary violence of the human nature. Somebody is killing an animal for us. The exhibition is playing with this ambivalence between violence and national or personal identity. It is a reminder that our civilization, and maybe even our identity, owes the butchers a lot. (Dan Popescu)