Touches of freedom- Romanian imported packs of re-branded Winchester cigarettes, 2020 (print prototypes and exhibition views from matcautomat group show, Automat Artspace, Saarbrucken)
The title of the work emerged from `Torches of freedom`, a 1920`s campaign developed under the umbrella of the first-wave feminism in US which was meant to encourage women to smoke as a gesture of false emancipation and equality with men.
Before the 90`s it was very hard to find in Romania other kind of cigarettes than the national brands, and whoever got to have a taste of the international brands experienced a (false) feeling of freedom, of connection with a forbidden world. I remember that my mom used to tell me that she started smoking just because smokers had the privilege to get more frequent breaks at her day-job back then. She told me that she had smoked her first `Kent` at a party, and thus she felt sick after it, it gave her an ecstatic feeling, just because she felt she was doing something exotic, something against the formal education she received.
(Usually smuggled) International cigarette packs became back then a currency for a lot of services, as they were kind of rare and desired in the local landscape. Even today Romania is one of the first countries from Eastern-Europe which has one of the highest rates for tobacco smuggling. Winchester is one of the cheapest and consumed brands among the middle and low class population, for which smoking is a luxuriant vice. I associated the false symptom of freedom populated through the vintage cigarette slogans with some pictures of opulence and poverty which reflect upon what could be understood as the irony of what these brands will never provide along with their false promises of freedom and emancipation.
For this project, I kept the original template of the Winchester cigarette-pack and digitally changed the name of the brand, slogan, and photos, and covered the initial packs of cigarettes with the new prints. I then sent them through a friends luggage by plane for an exhibition in Saarbrucken, without declaring them, almost like enacting an act of smuggling, taking outside the country a cigarette brand which does not exist, which is not registered anywhere for real.
By `rebranding` them, and changing their utility by turning them into an artwork, I question if my act could be compared to smuggling or hacking.
