Sculpted Spaces
Construction sites envision the potential for future buildings or the removal of structures deemed unworthy. To construct, one must first deconstruct. Whether through demolition or altering the natural environment, progress is impossible without this initial step. Materials, objects, and temporary installations created by workers to aid their daily activities all reveal a state of transition.
The photographs are taken on weekends when work is paused, making these visits to construction sites akin to visiting artist ateliers. During these visits, I select and photograph the work in progress. The images challenge perceptions of scale and highlight the sculptural qualities of everyday construction sites.
Selection of images taken in Zurich
Work in progress 2020 –
Styro City
Styro City is a study of thermal insulation in Romanian architecture. The sequence of photographs is a reference to the urban transformations that marked most Romanian cities in the last two decades. The process of thermal insulation started as the premise of rehabilitating the housing blocks in the early 2000s. After what was considered at the time a grand success, western European styrofoam suppliers saturated the local market. Thus the material has become the most affordable solution among private owners, as well as residential developers. Through this process the constructions are being uniformized and standardized, bringing all the architecture styles together under the same material. This project imagines the predefined styrofoam as an architectural object, a hint to the face of contemporary Romanian architecture.
Holding Pattern
Holding Pattern is a manoeuvre used in aviation designed to delay an aircraft already in flight while keeping it within a specified airspace. The procedure involves oval flights performed by planes, waiting for new information regarding the landing availability. Between 2017 and 2019, I repeatedly circumnavigated the Ghimbav-Brasov Airport along the barbed wire fence to photograph the construction of the Airport, the landscape and the leftovers. As the Airport underwent several challenges to its opening, it became a local fixture of inactivity and unfulfilled progress. The pieces of infrastructure that I have photographed, some in decay and some in disrepair, became emblems of mediation on place, industry, economy and the promises of a change of ideological format to be completed. The images gravitate around the runway and depict a portrait of a landscape embedded with a strong, palpable sense of waiting.
After completing the runway in 2014 and several years of stagnation, the first Airport to be built in post-communist Romania announced its opening in the summer of 2023.
Mihai Sovaiala is an artist currently living and working in Zurich. Since 2013, his photographic work focuses around urban development structures and their peripheries, questioning the impact of architecture on the city’s context and history. He presents his works either in exhibition contexts, mainly through installations or in book formats, which are at times, self published. He completed his Meisterschüler studies in 2020 at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, under the guidance of Joachim Brohm, after getting his bachelor degree in photography from the National University of Arts in Bucharest.
Location
Contact
Awards
- 2021Selected at FotoHof Calling, Salzburg, AT
- 20201st prize, Young Artists Connections, Switch Lab, Bucharest, RO
- 2019Salzburg Summer Academy, Erste Stiftung Grants, Salzburg, AT
- 2018Center of Documentary Photography Grants, Bucharest, RO
- 2017Shortlisted at Unseen Dummy Award, Amsterdam, NL
Exhibitions
- 2023Holding Pattern at 2/3 Galeria, Bucharest, RO
- Styro City part of Beyond Photography at National Art Museum, Kishinev, MD
- Sculpted Spaces part of See What. Photography in Romania after 2000 at MARe/Museum of Recent Art, Bucharest, RO
- 2019The neighbours thought it was a science lab part of Moderne. Ikonografie. Fotografie - Das Bauhaus und die Folgen 1919 - 2019 at Kunstmuseum Kloster, Magdeburg, DE
- Reacknowledged Structures: Models part of Circulation(s) at 104 Centquatre, Paris, FR
Publications
- 2021Holding Pattern book review published online on americansuburbx.com
- Styro City published in Camera Austria Magazine, Issue 153
- 2020Interview published in Revista Foi, 3rd Issue, Magazine
- Holding Pattern published in British Journal of Photography, March issue, Magazine
- 2019Gone Shopping published in KAJET Issue 3, Magazine
Awards
- 2021Selected at FotoHof Calling, Salzburg, AT
- 20201st prize, Young Artists Connections, Switch Lab, Bucharest, RO
- 2019Salzburg Summer Academy, Erste Stiftung Grants, Salzburg, AT
- 2018Center of Documentary Photography Grants, Bucharest, RO
- 2017Shortlisted at Unseen Dummy Award, Amsterdam, NL
Exhibitions
- 2023Holding Pattern at 2/3 Galeria, Bucharest, RO
- Styro City part of Beyond Photography at National Art Museum, Kishinev, MD
- Sculpted Spaces part of See What. Photography in Romania after 2000 at MARe/Museum of Recent Art, Bucharest, RO
- 2019The neighbours thought it was a science lab part of Moderne. Ikonografie. Fotografie - Das Bauhaus und die Folgen 1919 - 2019 at Kunstmuseum Kloster, Magdeburg, DE
- Reacknowledged Structures: Models part of Circulation(s) at 104 Centquatre, Paris, FR
Publications
- 2021Holding Pattern book review published online on americansuburbx.com
- Styro City published in Camera Austria Magazine, Issue 153
- 2020Interview published in Revista Foi, 3rd Issue, Magazine
- Holding Pattern published in British Journal of Photography, March issue, Magazine
- 2019Gone Shopping published in KAJET Issue 3, Magazine