Conflicted Identities and Art Therapy: Practices and Case Studies in Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca, Romania (Accepted)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper reports on the way in which the authors practice art therapy in order to provide useful experiences to children and youths who encounter the stigma of cultural differences. The art therapy team is interdisciplinary and includes additional professionals in europsychiatry, psychology, and social work. Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, Romania, is a leading city for computer and web-based technologies. The city has a historically multiethnic population who maintain their language-based cultural identities. Although Hungarians are the largest minority in the city, keeping traditions alive is contentious, even as Hungarian-language schools and cultural establishments provide anchors. Conflicts between Hungarian and Romanian ethnic populations are often subtle, sometimes pronounced, and largely expressed in adult society. But the effects of such conflicts can be severe on children and youths with disabilities, whose self-image and social skills are less robust. The therapists use all media, especially clay and virtual experiences in a multimedia setting. 3D multimedia installations are found to be effective in creating environments in which parent-child and child-and-peers interactions can be visualized and rehearsed. These transformational experiences help to increase self-confidence, tolerance and resilience for effected children and youths. The case studies presented here derive from three locations in Cluj: the Mental Health Center for Children and Adolescents at the Children’s Hospital (132 cases per year), from the “Romulus Vuia” summer camp at the outdoor Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania, and the clay studio of Emilia Chirila. Benefits arise from experiences based in artistic creativity: materializing ideas and coping with unexpected outcomes.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Emilia Chirila is a ceramic artist and Art Therapist at the Mental Health Center for Children and Adolescents at the Children’s Hospital in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Chirila graduated from the Ion Andreescu Fine Arts Institute in Cluj in 1978, worked as the designer of production ceramics at the Iris Ceramic Factory in Cluj until 2005, and began exhibiting clay sculptures in 1991. Chirila has been working as an art therapist since 2008, and finds the workshop setting the most favorable and clay very suitable for engaging with her patients in a beneficial way.

Diana Dragan-Chirila is a multimedia artist and Lecturer at the University of Art and Design (UAD) Cluj-Napoca. She is a graduate of the UAD Cluj-Napoca, obtained her masters in 2002 at the Polytechnic School of Design in Milan, Italy, and earned her doctorate in visual arts in Photo-Video and Computerized Image Processing at UAD Cluj-Napoca in 2011.
The creative work of Dragan-Chirila focuses on experimental and mixed-media photography, digital manipulation, interactive video and animation. She has participated in numerous artistic events, exhibitions, biennials and national and international film and animation festivals, most recently in Politics of the Machines--Art and After, Copenhagen May 15-17, 2018.