Takeover #210 Alina Lupu
Alina Lupu: Instagram / Website
#210 (05/09 - 09/09, 2022) written by Robin Speijer, interview by Joris Broekhoven
What is our context as artists, or any other field of labour, and how does it influence us? Alina Lupu is continuously asking herself this question. She wants to better understand the (economic) structures around us and challenge them. What does it mean to work? What does it mean to be an artist? Hailing from Romania, she first studied Sociology and Psychology. After working for a while in a different field and starting another study, she eventually went to the Rietveld, where she graduated from Fine Arts in 2016.
“After studying I ended up in a precarious position. Sometimes financially you need the job you end up with. And then, as an artist you have two choices. You can ignore your job, and just use it as a means to pay your rent, or you can go a step further and reflect on what it means for you to have that job. I choose the second option and assimilated my job after graduation into my practice. And this curiosity towards how artists end up making a living with sidejobs has been motivating me the past 5 to 6 years to continue making art.”
Alina’s work is very conceptual in nature. On her website you can dive into an abundance of texts she’s written on her projects. These deal with many themes, such as housing and labour precarity, solidarity, and her personal context and history. Throughout dealing with and researching all these topics she gained a better understanding of herself and her position within society.
“Criticism and critical thinking are important. It’s good to stay aware of your context so you won’t get dragged into it.”
Alina’s work has no set physical medium, as long as the medium can carry out the function she has in mind well within the context she intends it for. For example, in her project “Work, Rest, What we will’ a series of posters make us consciously think about how we spend our time. The posters are divided in sets. One poster shows a blank line to be filled, the second shows the text ‘hours for’ followed by ‘work’, ‘rest’, and ‘what we will’. It confronts us with the fact these hours are reigned by rules created by our government bodies and financial contexts, and have been changed to what they are now because of, for example, protests that have taken place in the past. We take this division of labour for granted, however, it is quite a new invention. And since it’s a new invention we should also think that it can be further changed in the future.
During her takeover, Alina will talk about a range of subjects that play a role in her work, and share her personal experiences that have shaped her artistic practice. We may even get lucky with a giveaway she’s planning for one of her publications.
“After studying I ended up in a precarious position. Sometimes financially you need the job you end up with. And then, as an artist you have two choices. You can ignore your job, and just use it as a means to pay your rent, or you can go a step further and reflect on what it means for you to have that job. I choose the second option and assimilated my job after graduation into my practice. And this curiosity towards how artists end up making a living with sidejobs has been motivating me the past 5 to 6 years to continue making art.”
Alina’s work is very conceptual in nature. On her website you can dive into an abundance of texts she’s written on her projects. These deal with many themes, such as housing and labour precarity, solidarity, and her personal context and history. Throughout dealing with and researching all these topics she gained a better understanding of herself and her position within society.
“Criticism and critical thinking are important. It’s good to stay aware of your context so you won’t get dragged into it.”
Alina’s work has no set physical medium, as long as the medium can carry out the function she has in mind well within the context she intends it for. For example, in her project “Work, Rest, What we will’ a series of posters make us consciously think about how we spend our time. The posters are divided in sets. One poster shows a blank line to be filled, the second shows the text ‘hours for’ followed by ‘work’, ‘rest’, and ‘what we will’. It confronts us with the fact these hours are reigned by rules created by our government bodies and financial contexts, and have been changed to what they are now because of, for example, protests that have taken place in the past. We take this division of labour for granted, however, it is quite a new invention. And since it’s a new invention we should also think that it can be further changed in the future.
During her takeover, Alina will talk about a range of subjects that play a role in her work, and share her personal experiences that have shaped her artistic practice. We may even get lucky with a giveaway she’s planning for one of her publications.