ORSOLYA
Orsolya
Gál (b. Târgu Mureș, Romania) is an interdisciplinary artist who works at the border of installations, object theatre and architecture.
Orsolya completed her education at the faculty of architecture, followed by a masters in fine arts in Cluj Napoca, Romania.
The experience she gained in scenography in Italy, inspired her interest in puppetry. Looking for an alternative education in this field, in 2015 she became the student of the puppeteer Stathis Markopoulos in Athens. Her collaboration with the Greek puppeteer and the architect Tiberiu Bucsa, led to the project called Selfie Automaton, a mechanical installation composed of 33 wooden puppets, which represented Romania in the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2016.
In 2017 she produced her first show Pulcinella's Insomnia in Naples, which has traveled from Romania, to Hungary, Greece, Italy and Nairobi, Kenya.
A workshop in 2018 on the theme of traditional shadow puppetry in India, Karnataka, gave birth to her next show for adults Short Essay on Uncertainty, which received a special prize at the Festival Incanti in Torino for image and sound design.
This same experience connected her research in shadow theater with her experimental work started in 2014, on plants in motion, a project which includes the observation and manipulation of plants, with the desire of creating a multidisciplinary work, involving fine arts and narrative in movement. The project materialized in the short film Etudes from an inner garden during the ‘Collider’ residency at Contemporary Calgary. ‘Etudes from an inner garden’ participated at the Bucharest International Dance Film Festival in September, 2020, at Fuori Formato Festival Internazionale di Danza at Torino in 2021 September, at Festival Oodaaq in Rennes in 2022 and at the group exhibition ‘Rerouting’ at the gallery Contemporary Calgary, Canada in the spring of 2022.
In the summer of 2021 she continued her work with shadows and built the mechanical automaton Real shadows, composed of a wire puppet, shadow projection and a mechanical system that puts the puppet in motion, for the exhibition ‘Work Upside Down - The future of work’, curated by the Cluj Cultural Center. The installation questions the ethical component of human work in the future.
Her last two works turned her focus on a more general problem: our relation with the natural and material environment. Searching for a secret garden studies households with vegetable gardens of small producers, who manage to produce enough food on a relatively small territory for 1-2 families in Transilvania. Gardens that are valuable from the point of view of diversity, complex gardening and beauty, and bring to focus an old sustainable model of cohabitation between man and natural habitat that can be adapted to our contemporary needs. The project implies plans of the gardens, photos and a video, and it was realized with the help of Cluj Cultural Center and Romania Remarcabila.
Her research related to natural environment continued in her work about the waters and streams in the village Bradet, as part of the multi - residency project called Flowing Streams, organised by EUNIC Romania and supported by Rezidenta9, as well as in LOC, a project with four authors, consisting of four installations presented in AR ( augmented reality), related to the biodiversity of the “Parcul central” in Cluj.
As part of Orsolya’s activity related to contemporary puppetry, together with Tiberiu Bucsa she opened their studio on Tipografiei 18 in the center of Cluj Napoca, to become an apartment theater once in a month for small companies from Romania and abroad.yt
Contact: galorsolya@ymail.com
Address: Tipografiei 18, Ap.2, Cluj Napoca 400101, Romania
Tel: +40728876354
Orsolya completed her education at the faculty of architecture, followed by a masters in fine arts in Cluj Napoca, Romania.
The experience she gained in scenography in Italy, inspired her interest in puppetry. Looking for an alternative education in this field, in 2015 she became the student of the puppeteer Stathis Markopoulos in Athens. Her collaboration with the Greek puppeteer and the architect Tiberiu Bucsa, led to the project called Selfie Automaton, a mechanical installation composed of 33 wooden puppets, which represented Romania in the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2016.
In 2017 she produced her first show Pulcinella's Insomnia in Naples, which has traveled from Romania, to Hungary, Greece, Italy and Nairobi, Kenya.
A workshop in 2018 on the theme of traditional shadow puppetry in India, Karnataka, gave birth to her next show for adults Short Essay on Uncertainty, which received a special prize at the Festival Incanti in Torino for image and sound design.
This same experience connected her research in shadow theater with her experimental work started in 2014, on plants in motion, a project which includes the observation and manipulation of plants, with the desire of creating a multidisciplinary work, involving fine arts and narrative in movement. The project materialized in the short film Etudes from an inner garden during the ‘Collider’ residency at Contemporary Calgary. ‘Etudes from an inner garden’ participated at the Bucharest International Dance Film Festival in September, 2020, at Fuori Formato Festival Internazionale di Danza at Torino in 2021 September, at Festival Oodaaq in Rennes in 2022 and at the group exhibition ‘Rerouting’ at the gallery Contemporary Calgary, Canada in the spring of 2022.
In the summer of 2021 she continued her work with shadows and built the mechanical automaton Real shadows, composed of a wire puppet, shadow projection and a mechanical system that puts the puppet in motion, for the exhibition ‘Work Upside Down - The future of work’, curated by the Cluj Cultural Center. The installation questions the ethical component of human work in the future.
Her last two works turned her focus on a more general problem: our relation with the natural and material environment. Searching for a secret garden studies households with vegetable gardens of small producers, who manage to produce enough food on a relatively small territory for 1-2 families in Transilvania. Gardens that are valuable from the point of view of diversity, complex gardening and beauty, and bring to focus an old sustainable model of cohabitation between man and natural habitat that can be adapted to our contemporary needs. The project implies plans of the gardens, photos and a video, and it was realized with the help of Cluj Cultural Center and Romania Remarcabila.
Her research related to natural environment continued in her work about the waters and streams in the village Bradet, as part of the multi - residency project called Flowing Streams, organised by EUNIC Romania and supported by Rezidenta9, as well as in LOC, a project with four authors, consisting of four installations presented in AR ( augmented reality), related to the biodiversity of the “Parcul central” in Cluj.
As part of Orsolya’s activity related to contemporary puppetry, together with Tiberiu Bucsa she opened their studio on Tipografiei 18 in the center of Cluj Napoca, to become an apartment theater once in a month for small companies from Romania and abroad.yt
Contact: galorsolya@ymail.com
Address: Tipografiei 18, Ap.2, Cluj Napoca 400101, Romania
Tel: +40728876354