This community-engaging multimedia exhibition, which opened in May 2025 at the Palace of Culture (Palatul Culturii) in Iași, Romania, aimed to increase the visibility of Iași’s ethnic minorities and their traditions. It was part of the international REVIVE project initiated to promote cultural heritage, build new capacities for young artists and curators, and strengthen cooperation between cultural and educational sectors at the European level.

The REVIVE project is a continuation of the REFRESH – Refreshing Heritage Sites and Legends project, initiated in 2018 on the occasion of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, and its follow-up REFRESH+, concluded in 2022. REVIVE explores sustainability in heritage through living public spaces, digital technologies, arts and crafts, and intercultural dialogue. Young talents are selected through an open call and take part in live experiments across four different countries. Preparation for the onsite work includes participation in online bootcamps as well as open-access capacity-building seminars.

Curatorial interventions included concept development, exhibition texts, social research (including in-person interviews within the communities), and postproduction of the documentary material (transcription and narrative conception).

EXCERPTS

What is the beating heart of Iași like? 

With this exhibition, we hope to showcase glimpses of the diverse life in Iași, with particular attention to the differences that enrich it. Since the material and symbolic heritage of the Palace of Culture feels like the heart of the city, we chose to reflect this idea in a tangible way. At the center of the space stands a carefully constructed heart. It is an installation that materializes the layered, collective nature of Iași’s past and present. 

Once warm and steamy, with industrial mechanisms in full operation, the Palace basement now shelters the symbolic heart of the city. The exhibition highlights the concepts of interiority, inclusion, and living tissue. The images and narratives surrounding the symbolic heart reflect life in Iași today, as captured through the eyes of those of us who worked on this project, moved by our curiosity and care for the local population. 

In the corners of the space, fragments of industrial heritage echo the city’s enduring relationship with labor and transformation. These remnants of old technology now serve as a reminder of what sustains any system—it is activity and care for its parts. 

Together, the elements we have used—whether textiles, moving and still images, drawings, or various artifacts—form a living archive. The exhibition invites you to move through the city’s inner stories, held together by both memory and a vision for the future.

Heart (Ela Leko, spatial installation, synthetic and natural fabrics, six meters, 25 individual pieces)

A community is not simply a sum of individual parts, nor a group in which each part loses its individuality. When multiple perspectives and efforts find themselves in one space, interdependence occurs naturally and produces more than it takes away—it enriches everyone’s knowledge, capacity, and efficiency.

The heart installation represents the layered community of Iasi, the beating heart of the city. Its layers are the people and their skills coming together like growing hemp, where each participant retains uniqueness and room for unrestricted movement.

The warmth of the installation’s colors makes it reminiscent of a hearth, the fire of a home that invites both family members and guests to get together in pleasant company. The museum visitor is encouraged to come closer just the same.

How was modernity forged?

While honoring the people of Iași, it is impossible not to honor the tangible results of their long-lasting contribution to the city’s life. The technology once used inside the Palace of Culture stands as evidence of shared goals and point of inspiration. 

In the space above the beating heart at the center of the exhibition, the enlightened panels showcase achievements made possible through collective effort, coordination, and human labor. In the modernity of the industrial era, there is an undoubted human element—it was human minds and hands that pictured and made the impressive mechanical systems that sustained almighty industries. 

The silhouettes of tools and machine parts, illuminated from behind, trace this very evolution, one taking place from individual human gestures to complex industrial systems. These forms are not static. They were adapted throughout time, in a constant dynamic of trial and error. What we now call industry began with handwork, craftsmanship, and responding to immediate necessity, long before the rise of factories and engines.

Machines remain cold and insignificant without human input. This visual archive resists the erasure of the human factor in the story about mechanical power. Beneath the cold surfaces of machines lies accumulated knowledge, shared practice, and embodied skill. The panels expose the invisible infrastructure of labor that has long fueled them.

Just like the history of other places shaped by production and exchange, Iași’s history is built through the collective effort of communities. This exhibition invites you to see not just what was made but how and by whom.

Photos taken by Radu Neacșu.