We take off from Bucharest. It’s a mild, snowless November day. We are flying to a far away northern land, surrounded by water in all its forms: glaciers, waterfalls, snow and ocean. Megan takes out her yarn and starts crocheting on the plane. Her yarn is a fellow traveller, guiding us on this journey to the center of the earth, ensuring we do not get lost. It measures our distances and our differences. What you’ll see in this exhibition is a shipmate’s journal. It’s a map of a world that we discovered in a season of freezing blue light.

A journey to the center of the Earth is a project developed as part of a residency exploring Sami culture and the ties between Norway and Maramureș (Ro), focusing on textile art. Though geographically and historically distinct, these two cultures share a deep connection rooted in their philosophy of life and the way people relate to nature—particularly in how they translate emotions and feelings into color, visible in their traditional garments. These similarities have been observed and archived to build a story/exhibition inspired by this artistic research.

Artists Megan Dominescu and Linn Rebekka Åmo were invited to take part in this residency exchange, each bringing their artistic and personal perspectives on working with textiles. Mihaela Moldovan and Loredana Ilie have joined them in this exhibition, expanding on the idea of tracing our steps from familiar places into entirely new, unknown territories. Mihaela’s work, rooted in her origins in Maramureș, explores nostalgia, fragility, and impermanence. Loredana creates a map of the monsters from Maramureș and Norway, connecting the mythologies of these two regions.

We have never been to Norway before. From Maramureș, we have a long way to go, a path strewn with images, and sensations, blending together like a dream. I haven’t seen so much snow since I was a child playing in the village where I was born. The water, the sky, the mountains, and the snow make the landscape seem unearthly. We stop in the middle of a small harbor town, Bodø, which has been chosen as a cultural capital in 2024. It’s cold and the air seems fresh and crystal-clear. We visit cities and museums and we want to understand history. To taste and smell the tastes and smells in the kitchens of the people who live here. “We’ll only eat fish,” we said to ourselves as we left. We kept our word.

There is a Norwegian proverb that says, “Write where it burns.” And that’s what we do. We take the stillness and strangeness of a wintry landscape with us and journey further into ourselves, seeking warmth.

The exhibition title is inspired by Jules Verne’s novel Journey to the center of the Earth, as the participating artists embarked on an adventure—one of knowledge and exploration of new cultural and geographical spaces.