Alida Velea

Your work seems to operate within a dialectic between memory and contemporaneity, where cultural identity is neither fixed nor nostalgically retrieved, but rather continuously rearticulated. Could you elaborate on how this negotiation unfolds within your studio process, and to what extent you conceive of painting as a site of temporal compression or even historical re-inscription?

My work in the studio is extremely demanding; especially everything related to the creation and composition.
I start from a theme that I choose, depending on the personal events but also on the social, economic, and political ones of the moment. I work a lot on sketches, I think about which elements are suitable for what I want to convey and how I can integrate them; I analyze which medium would be more suitable: painting, drawing, a physical collage or a digital one?