an exhibition celebrating the summer solstice and the Sânziene festival

about light, rite, and memory: antique bridal textiles step into the present, and the solstice wreath of sânziene shifts—by ritual—from the maiden’s body to the “body” of the house, protecting both matter and spirit.

Textiles from two ethnographic collections—Drăgaica Roșie and Iulia Gorneanu—come together to tell a story.

Sânziene / Drăgaica (mythic folk maiden) — midsummer
On 24 June, the sun is at its height. Girls in white dance in circles, weave yellow-bedstraw wreaths, and cast them at dawn on rooftops for signs of luck, love, and harvest. Folklore opens the sky: healing plants peak, animals “speak,” and the world remembers its origins.

Concept — the Sânziene house
Three vaulted rooms at Hanul Gabroveni become a dwelling of thresholds, windows, and rooflines crowned with vegetal wreaths—apotropaic gestures translated into space, light, and passage.

Rooms — from threshold to body
Room One draws a luminous threshold and a discreet sacred axis inside the brick nave. Room Two gathers early-20th-century blouses and full bridal ensembles—pure whites, solar embroideries, and the felt presence of the body—alongside circular (feminine) and cross-shaped (masculine) floral weavings. A projection room suspends time with archival phantoms of village life that flicker and fade like memory.

Textiles — the bridal code
Shirts, dress blouses, skirts, belts, headscarves and rare adornments map the rite of passage from earthly bride to “Bride of the Sun,” revealing the textile body as a stitched carrier of belief.

Soundscape — The Return
Bianca Diana Popa’s looping score for flute, violin, cello, and piano revisits a 1912 Bartók manuscript gathered in Murani (Timiș): a meditative opening, a resolute close, and the pulse of eternal return threading the rooms.

Photography — A Memory of a Sunbeam
Alexandru Crișan’s recent images of late-19th/early-20th-century houses converse with archives (Tache Papahagi, Denis Gallaway), tracing how light becomes image, memory, and—finally—tender forgetting.

Credits: Brides of the Sun/ MIRESELE SOARELUI  an exhibition of antique textiles.

Curator: Iulia Gorneanu. Co-curator: Ana Maria Crișan. Textiles & adornments: the collection of Iulia Gorneanu & the Drăgaica Roșie collection. Curatorial text: Ana Maria Crișan, Iulia Gorneanu. Photography “A Memory of a Sunbeam”: Alexandru Crișan. Archive images: Images d’ethnographie roumaine (Tache Papahagi), Rumanien (Kurt Hielschler). Film projections & visual edit: Alexandru Crișan. Soundtrack & composition: Bianca Diana Popa. Floral arrangements: Daniela Marin, Rulota cu Flori. With the support of the ARCUB technical team.

Place: ARCUB – Hanul Gabroveni | Sala Bolților (Str. Lipscani 84–90), București • 19–30 iunie 2023