Andreea Medar (b. 1990) is a Romanian artist exclusively represented by Mind Set Art Center, Taipei. Her practice includes objects and mixed media, sculptures, media installations, and video works. Since 2017, she has also engaged in collaborative projects with Mălina Ionescu, a Romanian artist, curator, and art critic. Her imagery rewrites her own personal imaginary through the juxtaposition of contrasting elements, in projects that explore themes such as family history, rural community, ritual, change, dissolution, and persistence.

“Ruptul Sterpelor” is based on a pastoral custom from the Maramureș region of Romania, also practiced in the village of Săcel. The ritual marked the beginning of the grazing season and took place in spring, when shepherds would measure the sheep’s milk for the first time — a gesture of validation and belonging to the shepherding community, through which the exact amount of milk and cheese each villager was to receive for the year was established. The event culminated in a communal meal, where doine and traditional songs, passed down through generations, were sung. Through conversations with locals, I learned that these practices are slowly disappearing, along with the decline of agriculture and traditional ways of life. Fewer and fewer families raise sheep today, and the songs once performed during “Ruptul Sterpelor” are now nearly forgotten. The disappearance of an agriculture-based economy brings with it other losses as well: songs, customs, crafts, and forms of communal coexistence.

The proposed work consists of a ceramic vessel (historically used as a milk container), made in collaboration with local potter Burnar Tănase. On its inner surface, a fragment of a traditional song related to “Ruptul Sterpelor” is inscribed in Braille (via perforation). A light source inside transforms the vessel into an intimate lantern, alluding to its current uselessness — it can no longer function as a container, having become a kind of strainer. The vessel will be displayed on a rotating stand, with an audio recording playing underneath — created together with Mrs. Maria Catană, one of the few people who still remembers those melody.

The song becomes a sonic code of collective memory, embedded in clay. “Ruptul Sterpelor” is both an act of recovery and transformation. It is a work that speaks of community, loss, and resilience.

(Andreea Medar about her work, july 2025)