To Eat His Own Funeral Alms – Romanian Sayings Served Up on a Plate

To Eat His Own Funeral Alms – A-și mânca singur coliva is a Romanian saying that is used to express when someone did something so bad, lacking dignity, respect, or inhumane, that he is considered dead. When someone loses his respect and dignity he is already dead in the eyes of others.

The funeral alms (Coliva) is an offering brought to the dead, a tradition of thousands of years old, closely related to the notion of duty, and moral obligation, which is mandatory, and any deviation is condemned by society.

To better understand an artistic conceptual series you must read the title and project statement. It all starts from an idea, a message that the artist wants to convey, and his own personal beliefs about the world.

As an artist, it’s important to have a point of view of the current state of the world, especially when we do not have the right to an opinion anymore if it’s not the official one, and we see our freedom of speech being taken away. The mission statement of an artist should reflect his own belief about the world, a unique opinion based on his personal experiences.

Lately, I have more and more a conversation, with worried people that are wondering what is happening in this world.

I have chosen the title Romanian Sayings Served Up on a Plate for my new series because I wanted to emphasize the knowledge of Romanian sayings and proverbs gathered from the wisdom of the people. People know, feel, and understand what is happening, although many do not want to accept, and this comes as an encouragement that their instinct is right, they didn’t lose their minds or common sense, and the law of the world are still the same. Nothing has changed, even more, these troubled times only come to reassure us that we are right and not crazy.

The Romanian saying are basic laws about humankind, society, and what makes the world spin. These are from observation and have been a guide for hundreds of years. The knowledge simply doesn’t change only because it’s imposed by corrupted bad, evil laws or degrading measures.

The Romanian sayings are served up on a plate, a game word, only to imply the contradiction of reality and truth. In order for us to believe the new reality and accept the new truth, we must be served daily on a plate, (in Romanian plate has a double meaning – one represents a serving dish and one represents a space in which the war takes place) with lies, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracies, in a grotesque manner, until we will not have the right to think for ourselves about what is good or what is bad.

We must question everything and trust the wisdom of the old knowledge.