Antoaneta Tica is a Lecturer in the Fashion Department at the National University of Arts, Bucharest. She creates mainly by transforming various recycled materials (plastic, paper, textiles), otherwise discarded in the field. Her artworks always depict life forms or they refer to vital concepts. She draws attention to these kinds of issues not only through the approached topics, but also through the mediums which she chooses to work with.
This is Antoaneta’s second experience as a finalist in Paper on Skin. In 2020, however, her work sadly did not make it to Tasmania due to COVID-related freight shut-downs in Romania. That work, Let them Be(e)!, presented a strong environmental message, as does this year’s impressive Over the Rainbow.
For Over the Rainbow, the topic is concrete. Concrete has been used since Roman times and is now one of the main sources of greenhouse gases. ‘Eventually,’ Antoaneta says, ‘the whole living world will be affected… our blue-green planet will turn steadily into a dull surface…’
Antoaneta describes the work as a dress inspired by Roman armour made of many pieces in grey papier mâché, and an underdress with coloured applications made of paper, that will come out through the breaches between the “concrete” pieces. The whole aesthetic will be based on the contradiction between the precisely constructed concrete dress, with a dull lifeless grey chromatic, and the cheerful underdress with naturally “grown” vegetation.
Materials: Egg cartons, advertising magazines, copper core for helmet’s threads, fishing line core for cloak threads.
Antoaneta on INSTAGRAM