{"id":446770,"date":"2019-03-01T15:18:04","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T15:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/?p=446770"},"modified":"2019-03-07T09:29:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T09:29:27","slug":"stories-diaspora-romina-chetraru-artistic-moldovan-girl-italian-allure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/stories-diaspora-romina-chetraru-artistic-moldovan-girl-italian-allure\/","title":{"rendered":"Stories from diaspora\/\/ Romina Chetraru \u2013 the artistic Moldovan girl with an Italian allure"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 6<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

For her, art springs from simplicity, and even from difficulties. She always was a modest and fragile girl. Yet, her colourful soul constantly tried to escape the society\u2019s-imposed ceiling. It seemed to shine from inside. This is why she got the nickname \u2018little sun\u2019. Then, the \u2018little sun\u2019 has grown up. Let me introduce Romina Chetraru, one of the beautiful and creative spirits of our time.<\/p>\n

About the sunrise<\/h3>\n

\u201cEverything starts from where I have grown up: being intimately connected with nature, among the books in my mother’s library, while waking up at 5 am for gardening, being completely absorbed by the sunrise, with my shoes bathed in dew… I remember the taste of my grandmother’s bread, which was especially tasty when eaten in the shade of grapevine on the hill. Everything I am today is rooted in those moments.\u201d<\/em> Romina inherited the love for books and art from her mother and the ability to soulfully observe the surrounding things from her father.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n\n

At first, art took the form of passion for words for Romina. During her adolescence, words were the most appropriate way of expressing her own personality. \u201cI had the opportunity to write and direct a play in a social theatre. It was an unforgettable experience that enhanced my passion for art even more,\u201d<\/em> says Romina.<\/p>\n

Referring to her personality, Romina is an incredibly empathetic person. She loves interacting with people, discovering them, but sometimes she absolutely needs isolation as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not afraid of loneliness, on the contrary. The perfect balance of my life is to have my own \u2018footprint\u2019, to be who I really am, not who society dictates to be. I always look for simplicity in every aspect of my life. I succeed just sometimes, most of the time I don\u2019t. I am a little disaster, fluctuating from the state of chronic order to the colossal chaos. I avoid going to the streets that seem to me sad or without personality, even if that means to walk half the city.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

About the storm (moving to another country)<\/h3>\n

\u201cWhen I moved to Italy, my life turned into a fierce battle of integration. The words in my native language also began a profound conflict with the new ones in Italian. For a long period of time, I didn\u2019t write anything because of energy absence,\u201d<\/em> Romina recalls.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t easy at all. Our protagonist had to be transferred from a Moldovan high school to an Italian one. \u201cThe high school in Italy is like a university. I did not have a moment of break. I studied philosophy, anthropology, Latin anthology during lessons of 90 minutes and had oral and written exams\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Romina says that moving to Italy was the bravest and the most complicated choice she had ever made. \u201cWhen I look back, I wonder how I found the energy to keep up with the tsunami that struck me seven years ago. Actually, I am not the only Moldovan who has gone through this experience, but I noticed that there are some things that remain behind the curtain, and no one mentions them.\u201d<\/em> In Italy, being a stranger is quite complicated, because of the tensioned atmosphere in society regarding the flow of constantly arriving immigrants, as Romina claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cNowhere else did I feel so embarrassed that I am Romanian like here, and I had to be patient and break the stereotypes and the reputation created by some of our compatriots.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Romina says that 7 years ago she wasn\u2019t prepared enough for the Italian high school. \u201cIt was very simple to be held back. The passing mark was 6, and the teachers were extremely demanding. Being a perfectionist, I could not allow myself to fail.\u201d<\/em> That was the moment when she took a break from writing and discovered the photography as her new form of expression.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As she didn\u2019t have a professional camera, Romina was taking photos with her phone camera. The quality of the pictures was really low, but she was looking for the concept of the picture. She started to be more and more active, once she felt more integrated in the new society. \u201cI got involved in the school theatre, then I became a member of the school parliament and on my birthday, when my parents gave me my first camera, I became the official photographer of the school,\u201d<\/em> reveals Romina with a bright smile on her face, while recalling these moments.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Despite all these difficulties, Romina is enchanted by the intellectual, literary, artistic and culinary culture of Italy that fascinated her from the very first moment.<\/p>\n

About the rainbow of her art<\/h3>\n

\u201cThere was a period in my life when I dreamed of becoming a writer. I have 3 abandoned novels drafts. I was reading Octavian Paler, Ferdando Pessoa and dreaming of experiment like James Joyce with Ulise\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Romina didn\u2019t become a writer. She became a poet. Her first poetry book was a novelty for the public. The book named \u2013 \u201cPunctul\u201d (translated from Romanian as \u201cThe point\u201d) was her experiment. \u201cIt was clumsy, hobbling, incomplete, but mine. I put my soul in my first book. It has a lot of blank space to become a kind of diary or a sketchbook for the reader. I imagined how poetry can be wiped off, changed, how the reader writes his own poetry, his own thought. I tried to present the poetry differently.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t