Our era is often proclaimed as the era of communication, while in fact it is the era of non-communication, because it eliminates the essential, the being, putting the ephemeral instead of the permanent and the secular in front of the sacred.          

 

So, it was a wonderful surprise for me to see that at the Tatarashi Atheneum, in my native city of Iassy – far from tablets, mobile phones and computers – about 200 teenagers come every day to study music, design, sculpture, poetry, theatre, ballet.          

 

Impressed by all this, I decided to offer the Atheneum over 100 panels with photographs and texts that illustrate my adventure in the great universe of art, from Constantin Brancusi to Salvador Dali, from Edinburgh to the international art scene and the major museums in the world.   

       

And this, saying to my new friends that the road to the stars is long and, as long as it can be, it starts with the first step. A step I invite them to take together.          

 

At the same time, I presented them with a photo of me at the Amber Palace in Jaipur on the back of an elephant, mentioning that in the Vedic tradition the elephant is the being who remembers all previous lives, telling them that we, too, should not forget what a fabulous past we come from.

 

Radu Varia