Arts Lab 7.0: Loay ElMofty | Month VI

This month began with our mid-term evaluation in Bucharest, where we spent four days reflecting on our experience, exploring the city, and meeting volunteers from other projects. It was a very fun and enlightening experience, although I wished it had been a little longer because just when everyone started to get comfortable with each other, the program ended. Still, we made some new friendships, including a Greek volunteer named Nikos who visited us later in the month. During these days I also noticed how similar volunteers are across different projects, and sometimes it was funny to see versions of ourselves in other groups. 

After the evaluation we had five free days, which we used to travel to Budapest, a city that I found incredibly beautiful and one of the prettiest I have ever visited. The trip gave us a good moment of rest before returning to Târgu Frumos. When we came back, it was the beginning of Ramadan, and many of us were fasting, so we had to adapt our daily rhythm. 

Our main activity was working on personal artworks related to the Cucuteni culture, and we visited the Cucuteni Museum where a professor introduced us to the history of this ancient culture. I found it interesting that there is still limited information about them, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation some people believe their society was dominated by men, others think it was dominated by women. My personal conclusion was that such a prehistoric society may have existed before our modern concepts of gender roles and power structures were fully developed. Inspired by this idea, I created a yin-yang style sculpture of a Cucuteni man and woman completing each other, symbolizing balance and equality. 

Later in the month, an environmental activist from the Institut Français visited us; we presented our artworks, then went to a school where we facilitated a forum theatre session with children about environmental issues. Afterwards we attended a meeting in Iași with several environmental activists to discuss ecological challenges. One of my main realizations from this conversation was that many personal and social problems ultimately connect back to environmental conditions. 

Toward the end of the month we prepared our final official exhibition, which made me feel a bit sad because it reminded me that the program is almost coming to an end, even though it has been a very enjoyable experience. 

During the exhibition I presented my Cucuteni sculpture and invited children to vote on different gender-role statements to decide whether they felt they were fair or not; I was happy to see that most of them made thoughtful and rational choices. 

After the exhibition we began preparing the next project, the “Museum of Emotions”, which we are currently working on by redesigning our hub to host the new exhibition, and I am looking forward to seeing how this final phase of the program develops.

This monthly report was written by Loay El Mofty, our Egyptian volunteer taking part in a seven-month Arts Lab 7.0 mobility, co-funded by the European Union under the European Solidarity Corps.