CAOLIN recharged
In 2014, at a time when the public scene in Cluj had a reduced cultural offer, a few passionate young people bet on a niche sector – ceramic art – to launch an independent festival with minimal, if not non-existent, resources: the CAOLIN International Festival of Contemporary Ceramics. Their intuition and effort paid off. In a short time, the festival succeeded in bringing ceramics back to the attention of the Cluj public, popularizing not only contemporary creations, but also traditions or ceramic techniques current in Romania and the rest of the world.
CAOLIN has become a synonym for the celebration of national and international ceramics in Cluj, gaining an enthusiastic multigenerational audience. The success of the CAOLIN festival is in tune with the worldwide revival of ceramics, as exemplified by Ceramic Art London, a fair that in March this year saw a record number of participants, and the trend of ceramic workshops promoted as a kind of “new Pilates” for the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of contact with clay.
Kaolin milestones
2017 was a crucial year for the festival, first by obtaining the High Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Maria of Romania, then by establishing a fruitful partnership with the International Ceramics Biennial in Cluj for the section dedicated to the exhibition of conceptual-artistic ceramics. Also in 2017, the cultural café Espresso Studio, the “operational center” of the CAOLIN creative workshops over the year, was opened.
In December 2018, CAOLIN organized a surprise pre-Christmas edition in the Tailors’ Tower, a monument of great historical significance, which will also host the Pottery Fair.
Ceramics = civilization old and new
The CAOLIN program in 2019 promises to be very varied and articulated on several levels: Fair of contemporary ceramics and author’s design at the Tailors’ Tower; International exhibition of contemporary artistic ceramics at the Casino Centre of Urban Culture Cluj; exhibition of the mysterious Tlalte Talavettes from Tărtăria within the exhibition “I Want to Believe” at the National Museum of Transylvanian History (plus the CAOLIN workshop dedicated to them); workshops of artistic creation or restoration at the cultural café Espresso Studio (Saturday and Sunday, see program); screening of the documentary, made by BBC – Ceramica: A Fragile History (Part III) at the Victoria Cinema (Saturday, May 18, 18:00).
The CAOLIN Festival coincides this year with the Night of Museums, so on Saturday, May 18, the CAOLIN program in the Tower and Casino will be extended until 00:00, and the one at the Museum of the History of Transylvania until 23:45.
CAOLIN International Contemporary Ceramics Festival is organized under the High Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Maria of Romania.