Exhibitions

Tears That Laugh, Laughs That Cry explores the multiple facets of crying and laughter by bringing together twenty intergenerational and multicultural artistic positions. The exhibition addresses the charged space between these two strong emotions without treating them as opposites, but rather approaching them as transformative, porous and deeply relational. Tears may carry humour, laughter may bounce towards affective collapse. Both are bodily (re)actions that exceed language, constantly shaped by cultural codes, rituals and interactions.

The inaugural exhibition of NOCA Space (New Oradea Contemporary Art) brings together a constellation of artistic voices that explore themes of the playful and the monstrous, the surreal and the irrational, inviting viewers into a space of playful and, at times, disturbing dialogue. It comes at a time when we have become accustomed to living in fragmented and tangled realities, like worlds that simultaneously connect and separate, soothe and destabilize. As our inner and outer lives become increasingly disjointed, the exhibition turns to fantasy as a mode of resistance: a return to the aesthetics of fairy tales, to childlike wonder and to playful intervention.