"YOLO" - Anca Andreea Cobzaru, by Daniela Sand

Anca Andreea Cobzaru  is studying graphics (she is in her third year of university) at University of Arts and Design Cluj-Napoca. Her exhibition, "YOLO", was part of the Expo Maraton Cluj 2018, a competition for exhibition projects which takes place each May of the year. The exhibition was held at Galeria Casa Matei on May 10th.

The subject of the exhibition focuses on the unjustified hedonism of these days and the artist’s works present real aspects of the society. Central to these works is the phrase yolo  (you only live once) which is so overused nowadays in so many contexts and is every time related to positive and very joyful things. It seems that the young generations are often mistakenly using the phrase, they tend to give it wrong meanings, so the real meaning of  the concept is therefore misunderstood. They tend to send messages with no essence because they don’t always assume the things they do and the absence of justification lead to a partially assumed state of hedonism.

On the walls of Casa Matei the works stand out pretty clearly and from the first glance they don’t look like anything that is related to the phrase yolo that you see or hear elsewhere - and that’s because the artist is mocking this popular phrase and uses not so positive depictions of it. Every work is centered around a single figure - for example one of  them represents a person, who seems very bored, staying on a sofa with a remote control in her hand - and another one depicts a man sleeping in his bed. We know nothing more about the characters from these appearances; we can only assume things about them. The irony is emphasized when the artist mentions the definition of yolo from the  urbandictionary.com - "carpe diem" for stupid people. Carpe diem is also written on the work with the person sleeping. To my surprise, the exhibition is pretty rich in color and the background music that the artist chose to accompany the works creates a distinct atmosphere, especially in combination with the space at Casa Matei.

I encourage readers to go visit Anca’s works of art - if you didn’t see "YOLO", the exhibition will be probably reopened on another occasion. She will also participate in another exhibition in Bucharest on May 19th  at Manasia Hub.