On June 8th, the I’m So Angry (I Made a Sign) Pop-up Museum, an itinerant exhibition with personal stories from those who took part in revolutions and revolts in Europe, opened in Bucharest. Especially for the exhibit, the Romanian-Dutch artist Ioana Tudor performed her Greva Tăcerii (Silent protest): for five days, she executed a strike of silence in the busy city center of Bucharest. Just like her father did in 1990.
Happiest day
I’m So Angry tells the personal stories of those who took part in the infamous revolts and revolutions that shaped European history. You’ll read the story of Constantin Jinga, who was shot during the Romanian Revolution, but still calls that day the happiest of his life. Or the story of the Polish Mirka Chojecki-Nukowska, who would never call herself a hero, but was forced to flee because of her resistance. The museum shows how people set aside their fears and took action in extraordinary circumstances and raises the question: what would you do in their situation? Or what are you currently doing about your situation or that of your compatriots? Visitors are called upon to make their own protest sign and to show it to the world in an interactive video booth.
Symbolically following in her father’s footsteps
The museum was on view from June 8th till 13th, in Green Hours in Bucharest. Especially for the occasion, the Romanian-Dutch artist Ioana Tudor executed a five-day performance. Her father, Dumitru Tudor, held a strike of silence in June 1990, to protest the Iliescu-government. He called attention to thirteen injustices, among them the violence against protestors. He wore these thirteen bullet points on a large piece of paper around his neck. As a result of the protest, he was arrested and spent four months in prison. “The 'invisibility' of that one man who didn’t use his voice is symbolic of the powerlessness of a single man taking on a totalitarian state”, says Ioana Tudor. After her father’s protest, the Tudor family was forced to flee the country. They ended up in The Netherlands.
During the special opening night on June 8th of the I’m So Angry Museum in Green Hours, Ioana Tudor and her father asked the audience: what injustice needs to be protested nowadays? Based on these interactions, Ioana Tudor wrote down thirteen bullet points and hung them from her neck. Starting June 9th, she was being silent for five days on Plața Victoriei (Victory Square) in front of the government building. The strike ended symbolically on June 13th, when it was exactly 27 years ago mineworkers, acting as mercenaries for the authorities, violently beat down the protests against the then-government. More than a hundred people were killed in the process, over a thousand were arrested.
