Arts Lab 6.0: Luca Horváth - Month 3

Big Buna Ziua! This month was filled with Romanian folklore and traditions, working on MAF. I’m writing this report while battling fever in bed, so there may be some inconsistency.

We jumped right into the residency at Petru Rareș, it was really challenging and exhausting, but totally worth it in my opinion. It was strange to work together with teenagers who are only 2 years younger than me, I found it difficult to adapt to this, but thankfully Sona was much better at making friends with them. Putting together the card designs took quite a lot of time, but I learnt a lot about graphic design just by watching Sona work and then replicating what she did, I’m really thankful for that. 

We visited Ruginoasa a few days after the residency finished to get more familiar with Romanian traditions and folklore. That was also the only day this month when it snowed a lot, so we obviously had to spend a lot of time just playing in the snow, running around and having snowball fights like kids. I think this was my favorite day of the month.

Working on my personal artwork for MAF was quite challenging and stressful, I spent days with just trying to find the exact materials I needed and that wasted a lot of time. This resulted in, again, me not being completely satisfied with my finished product. I wanted to do so much more, but I just didn’t have the time and energy to do it. Even though in my eyes my artwork wasn’t perfect, everyone at the exhibitions found the jacket cool and they were really excited to try it on. 

This month we also had Egyptian night and Hungarian night. Preparing for my cultural night also took away a lot of time that I could’ve devoted to my personal artwork. I cooked dishes that I never did before, it took a lot of consulting with my parents. I called my mom on the phone so many times to ask her “is this bowl okay for this?”, “is this the good consistency?”, “is this supposed to look like this?”. Cooking for so many people I love so much was honestly amazing, especially when they told me how good it tastes.

I also had my hair cut this month. No, not by a hairdresser. Ella and Katrina put all their knowledge and skill together, had me sit down in the bathroom and gave me the most amazing haircut ever. I’m honestly so so happy with it, even though I still struggle to style it correctly.

I’m slowly getting better at making stickers, I feel like they can be a nice memory for both my fellow volunteers to remember their artworks and the visitors who come to the exhibition. However, finishing the stickers for the first exhibition is quite impossible, since a lot of us work on our artwork until the very last moment, including me.

At the end of the month, I went to see the folkloric parade in Iași. It was so amazing, all the noise, the costumes, the characters, the music, the rhythm, the attitude, the connections, it was like a completely different world. Following them on their route, I just couldn’t help but feel a little bit jealous of them. Throughout this month, I realized how much more important the traditional and folkloric arts are than I thought. This all inspired me to try to include my own culture in my artworks in the future that I will create when I return home.

And finally, on the last day we were supposed to do a “Christmas Market”, but it ended up not being really christmasy or markety either. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help my team much because I caught some sickness the day before which had me lay in bed with a fever all day. I felt terrible for “abandoning” them, but I tried to help with whatever I could.

At the end of this week, I’m traveling back to Hungary to spend the Christmas with my family. When I was thinking about how I should present my “3 Months in Romania!” experience, I realized I didn’t really have the time to really digest everything that happened here so far. So I hope these 2 weeks of vacation will give me some time to truly reflect and appreciate this experience on a much deeper level. And, of course, to rest and reconnect with my family and friends back at home.

Report written by Luca Horváth, she's from Hungary and she's one of the 14 volunteers participating in Arts Lab 6.0, a project co-funded by the European Union through the European Solidarity Corps program.