When The River Ends, So Do We

On December 16, 1989, protests against Nicolae Ceaușescu erupted in Timișoara, Romania. The demonstration quickly grew into a mass uprising. Security forces opened fire on the crowds, killing dozens. In the early hours of December 19, around forty bodies were secretly loaded into a refrigerated truck, and transported to Bucharest. That night, they were cremated in secrecy, and their ashes scattered into a canal near Popești-Leordeni. When The River Ends, So Do We responds to this act of erasure. The work presents five glass plates, each made using water drawn from the Dâmbovița River - the same river through which the victims’ ashes would have passed. Each plate is backed in gold, echoing Orthodox iconography once banned under communism. In contrast to the regime’s attempt to erase the dead, the work reframes them not as lost, but as sacred.