part of my master's degree research
In my studio (Iași, Romania –
2020 AD), I created a reproduction of the bust of Nefertiti (Amarna, Egypt –
1345 BC), which is currently housed in the Neues Museum in Berlin. The physical
distance between me and the original work (along with its production
process) is roughly 1,455 kilometers and 3,365 years.
Accessing the visual information necessary for this project required
several mediators: the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (the society that
discovered the bust in 1912), photographers who documented the sculpture, the
World Wide Web platform, and the pixel universe displayed on my personal laptop
screen. These represent just a portion of the technical intermediaries involved. Cognitive and cultural
mediators, which are much
harder to pinpoint, include animated cartoons featuring Tutankhamun that I
watched as a child, commercial reproductions of the bust (candles, flowerpots,
etc.), and cinematic portrayals of Nefertiti as a historical figure.
Additionally, since the subject is a well-established symbol of feminine
beauty, my study process was inevitably influenced by other icons of
this beauty ideal—contemporary, modern, and classical alike.
