In an unstable world, how can one still define a place as home? What does it mean to take root when everything is moving rapidly? Precarious housing marks the experience of the new generations, home stops being a stable physical place and turns into a mental condition, made of transitory rituals. From these questions take shape the new pictorial works of artist Dumitrița Răzlog (1991, Podgoreni, Republic of Moldova), conceived for the solo exhibition All the Last Times in the Same Place, at the Blue Institute of Futures in Milan from May 8 to 16, 2025.

Dumitrița Răzlog, “Clarity Comes when the Boxes are Sealed”, 2025. Olio su tavola, dimensioni 47×32 cm. Photo: Mingya Huang, courtesy dell’artista

The project stems from the artist’s experience during a recent move from one house to another in Bucharest, where she currently lives and works. Every room left behind becomes an echo, every gesture an endless farewell ritual, so Dumitrița Răzlog builds an intimate and layered environment. The pictorial gesture becomes an emotional archive, a visual tension between scale and matter that returns the fragmentation of memory and the affective weight of lost places. Starting with static stills from a personal documentary process, the artist works by superimposition, layering color and sign into images that evoke dream, instability and nostalgia. The exhibition tour begins with the final moment of relocation with the large canvas Routines in the Event of Disappearance (2025) in which the artist depicts the last bath, a symbolic gesture ending the process of separation from her home. The blue color becomes liquid, flowing between solids and voids and extending beyond the main canvas onto a second, narrower support.

Dumitrița Răzlog, “Routines in the Event of Disappearance”, 2025. Olio su tela, dimensioni tela grande 120×280 cm, dimensioni tela piccola 30×280 cm. Photo: Mingya Huang, courtesy dell’artista

The artist alternates the use of raw canvas with wooden supports, the material on which Orthodox icons are painted. Fragmented and reassembled, they are reminiscent of furniture being moved from one place to another and all the domestic actions that, done for the last time, become charged with meaning and become like a religious ritual. In Clarity Comes when the Boxes are Sealed (2025) she accentuates this displacement of memories by reversing the sense of orientation of the depicted subject. The work The Tiles Stayed Cold out of Loyalty (2025) breaks the linearity of the exhibition composition: placed on the floor, it rests on an extruded polystyrene (XPS) support with a characteristic bright pink coloration that unexpectedly recalls the color palette used by the artist. This material becomes a witness to the transit of the works from Bucharest to Milan: transported already framed, the work is here resting in a temporary condition, perhaps ready to be packed and shipped again or waiting to take a place on the walls. Finally Remembrance Isn’t Care, but I Vacuumed Anyway (2025), a video shot on VHS, documents the stages of moving, constructing an aesthetic of the transient through visual glitches. The artist takes us through an unstable and deeply human emotional landscape, where identity is defined in the void left by departures and remembrance becomes the only place to stay.

Dumitrița Răzlog, “Some Landscapes Begin with your Body Turning Away”, 2025. Olio su tavola, dimensioni 42×90 cm. Photo: Mingya Huang, courtesy dell’artista

The solo exhibition is the prize won by Răzlog as part of the fifth edition of SITU Festival (2024), a residency and traveling festival born from an idea of Nicola Tineo and organized by A.P.S. Zona Blu, which took place in Modica, Sicily. During the residency, the historic spaces of the baroque village were transformed thanks to the site-specific installations of the artists-in-residence: Patrícia Harsány, Virginia Boncoraglio, Lisa Di Donato, Virginia Marchi and Letizia Guido, SANTA CECILIA & SEMIONAUTA and Pamela Velazquez. The last weekend of the residency saw the activation of a contemporary art festival, enriched by a public program: talks with the participation of Loredana Longo, Irene Biolchini, Sasha Vinci, Gianluca Collica (Collica&Partners), Francesco Lucifora (C.o.C.A Center of Contemporary Arts), Makramè A.P.S. with the Bosco Colto project, and Modicaltra; collateral interventions by Nicola Tineo and Sasha Vinci; and the 6+6 exhibition, curated by the Palermo-based artist-run space Parentesi Tonde, with works by Francesca Baglieri, Lorenzo D’Alba, Alberto Orilia, Doriana Bruccoleri, Roberto Orlando, Margherita Pedrotta, Rossella Poidomani, Arianna Modica, Antonio La Ferlita and Nanni Licitra.

Dumitrița Răzlog, “The Tiles Stayed Cold out of Loyalty”, 2025. Olio su tavola, dimensioni 30×42 cm. Photo: Mingya Huang, courtesy dell’artista

The festival included a screening of Yuri Ancarani’s film The People of Women and an art therapy workshop dedicated to the La Forza della Vita community, curated by Zona Blu. The open call visible on the instagram page @situfestival, for the sixth edition to be held Aug. 18-31, 2025, in Ficarra, near  Messina, is now online. With a site-specific and relational approach, SITU continues to propose itself as an independent platform for cultural experimentation in Southern Italy, activating an interdisciplinary residency aimed at seven visual artistə, performers, researcherə and collectives who wish to work in dialogue with the territory and its communities.

Francesca De Chiara

Info:

Dumitrița Răzlog. All the Last Times in the Same Place
8-16/05/2025
Blue Institute of Futures
Via Ludovico di Breme, 52 – Milano
Open call SITU Festival 2025: drive.google.com

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is a contemporary art magazine since 1980