Exploring humankind through Lea Rasovszky's weird and humorous art

The interdisciplinary artist Lea Rasovsky, born in 1986, is living and working in Bucharest. A University of the Arts graduate, she likes to explore media, not wanting to be contained by one. Her art is declining in drawings, installations, ceramics, but also painting or textile. Apprehending her work as an immersive installation, she combines those techniques and supports in the crafting of her universe. She mostly works with characters and faces in particular. Fascinated by the diversity and differences within humanity, Lea Rasovsky scouts for expressive faces. Faces that can show the multiplicity contained in humanity, full of emotions and paradoxes.

That’s her favorite subject: humankind and its complexities. Through those bizarre faces, she seeks to highlight stereotypes and values of society. Those weird-looking characters represent the ones that escape the categories, which are almost invisible to society’s eyes because they can’t adapt. They’re the figures of those that do not conform to societal standards. If we’re repulsed or amused by them, that’s the point: Lea Rasovsky considers humor to be a translation tool. Through it, we can tackle difficult topics on a more relaxed ground, which gives more space for empathy.

Lea Rasovsky’s art is positioned at the social periphery. If not faces, bodies, pop underculture, religion are at the center of her art. She explores sex, gender trouble, and romance from a unique perspective, always unexpected.

Her work is currently exhibited among 37 other artists and artists collective at the Museum of Queer Culture [?] in Bucharest. The series of exhibitions titled YOU FEEL ~ AND DRIFT ~ AND SING is a retrospective of Romanian queer artistic practices from 2001. 2001 is a landmark in Romanian LGBTQI+ history: it marks the repeal of Article 200 of the Penal Code of Romania, which criminalized same-sex relationships. Through four art venues, the artists converse around identity, desire, trauma, reinvent the present and imagine a common queer future.