Sorina Peia – when art trumps marketing

Cristina Blanaru Marketing, People, Profiler
She has a master degree in marketing and she enjoyed creativity studies at The Alternative School for Creative Thinking. Yet, her true calling wasn’t the business world, but art instead. She finished her applied visual arts school in Nice on the first position, she created amazing make-up statements for actresses on the Red Carpet at the Cannes Film Festival and now, in her 30ies, she is launching #ArtManifesto, her first exhibition.

The launch of the exhibition is scheduled for April 21st, at Box Office Locations. The first 20 works represent the materialization of a picto-poetical conversation between 2 generations of artists.

Sorina is a complex visual artist and works in charcoal, acryl or water colors and uses as support from classic canvas to unconventional surfaces.

Before the exhibition launch, Sorina gave us some information about herself and her art, agreeing to answer a few questions for AdHugger.

  1. You studied marketing, but eventually you switched to everything related to creativity and visual languages. Why? 

There are too many marketing directors building the very same old thing and not enough original artists in this world. I thought I could bring some equilibrium to the table and make things straight -)

We are at the dawn of a new era, AI is rising and AI making art is already old news. We have a duty to cultivate our human side and translate emotions into original visual content. At any time, intelligent brands can approach artists like me and build remarkable stories. I am open to this kind of collaboration and I think, in this way, I can also close the loop with my marketing background.

  1. You spent a year in Nice, France, studying photography, styling, body painting and make up for cinema and theatre. Which of those disciplines appealed most to your creative vibe? 

I like them all, really. The photography section provoked me the most and in a way encompassed the other disciplines: the make up with the right lights and shadows, focusing on bringing up the personality, through styling, the clothes also added up to the story and the background and the overall details of the context had to do the rest.

  1. What’s the story behind #ArtManifesto ? 

As a child, I had a difficult relationship with my dad, he was extremely exigent and constantly demanding. My brother received constantly the family appreciations, he was perfect in his math studies, while I was made of a different cloth, more focused on the arts.

When I grew up, we were constantly fighting on political topics – I am more inclined towards the right spectrum, as my dad was in his youth, now he is more into the left. We ended up in a painful silence with no more reason to talk to each other. In a reconciliation attempt, I proposed him an art game – he would send me his poems, some of them were written along the years, and I will reply with an acrylic painting, translating his poems, but also coding messages and metaphors.

  1. Which are the topics to be found in #ArtManifesto ? 

As an art duo, we ended up in approaching topics never discussed as father and daughter and that was a fascinating process. From technology that is alienating us, to love, absence, West vs East, fragility, erotism, nothing was taboo anymore.

Eventually, the project became contagious and the game of written messages becoming a visual encoded story operated like a virus among my friends. Music, novels and personal stories became new inspiration sources and on the 21st of April, at the exhibition launch, people will have access to all of it.

  1. How would you define your style? 

I’ve got influences from surrealism, expressionism and abstract art, but in the end, what matters most, is the multilayered message one can find encapsulated in my acrylic metaphors. It is never just one story and I am over the head happy when I see people resonating to my work.

  1. You will launch your exhibition at the Box Office Locations, in an underground art gallery in Bucharest. Why this place? 

My art is a constant work in progress, my inner self is reshaped with every painting. This eclectic space with over 100 year old handmade furniture placed near high end, contemporary leather sofas, all injected in the premises of an industrial building, once iconic for the communist Bucharest is pretty much a metaphor of my world. The old is new again, what was rejected becomes, after a deeper analysis, an interesting topic, the junk evolves into the necessary matter for the precious to be born and shine on. Also, this space, with a very unpretentious court yard and street dogs wandering around, but hiding beyond the walls, delightful fashion, art and photography spaces (since the entire building became an underground hub for talented Romanian creators to thrive), it is very much a symbol of my generation. Very much disregarded, yet with such an energy and appetite for evolution and success.

  1. A potential profile for the buyer of your work?

An individual looking at art as the perfect excuse for introspection.

Sorina’s works have the substance and the coherence of a dream. Look at them and you’ll discover how her subconscious left the faucet open and pour generously emotion, code and mix of atypical visual sources – one line from Basquiat, two from Miro, crome from Matisse and tribal geometries from Lascaux. Structured on more message levels, the works allow as many interpretation as people looking at them and that kind of richness makes them priceless

Teodora Migdalovici,

Exibition Curator, creator of #LoveAndLobby private diplomacy platform

The #ArtManifesto launch is harmonized by LoveAndLobby and Cannes Lions Romania and is part of a series of events aimed to promote Romanian talents both locally and abroad.