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Between home and elsewhere: factoring in Brancusi, Cioran and Celan, Romanian artists have had an outsized influence on the modern world. Counting herself a member of this diaspora, Toronto curator Mona Filip reflects on the newest chapter of this history.

Article Excerpt
As a young teenager in Bucharest in the 80s, I would fall asleep every night to Voice of America or Free Europe playing on my grandmother's radio, louder and louder as she grew increasingly deaf. Certain things that had to do with the politics of the "Golden Epoch" (Ceausescu's Communist Romania) had not been explained to me at that age, so I did not know exactly what those broadcasts were about. I only knew that they mysteriously entered our home from far away, off limits lands, said things that we were not allowed to talk about and had to be kept secret. The loudness of the radio was, however, belting out out covert disobedience, putting us in slight danger, as listening to these stations was one of the many forbidden things on the Communist censorship list. The mixed feelings of clandestine excitement and anxiety would seep into my dreams. It was only years later that I fully understood the subversive nature of these programs and the role they played for a nation besieged by its own government. In the few days preceding December 21, 1989, huddled with a couple of friends around a radio again, I listened to a euphoric report on the revolt brewing in Timisoara. Crossing borders and thresholds against all attempts of the secret police to suppress them, the voices on the radio spoke the minds of all those who would not dare make themselves heard. (1)

What I did understand very early on was that there were people who had gotten out of Romania one way or another and were living and creating abroad, in the free West, maintaining their ties against all odds and feeding the hopes of those left behind. I remember hearing, once in a while, whispered with vicarious but repressed joy, of someone else who had escaped: artists I admired onstage, or friends in my parents' circle. Of course, the rumours would focus on personalities of Romanian culture who sought freedom...