Gabriela Nicolae – I🖤BUFUNDEȘTI (2025) | crochet work

Description

Gabriela Nicolae – I🖤BUFUNDEȘTI (2025)

crochet work in acrylic and mohair yarn, with borders from yarn scraps, 33 x 13 cm

In I🖤BUFUNDEȘTI, Gabriela Nicolae plays with language, place, and subversion through a deceptively simple textile gesture. At first glance, the piece echoes the globally familiar “I ♥ …” tourist slogan. But here, the word București is transformed into Bufundești, replacing “cur” with “fund” – a synonym that shifts the tone from bodily slang to polite naming. The heart symbol does double duty: it stands in for both affection and the censored letters, creating a layered pun that is humorous, irreverent, and sharply local. Rendered in gold yarn on a black background and framed with a light beige border, the work resembles an emblem, badge, or municipal insignia. This formal clarity contrasts with the linguistic mischief embedded in the text. Nicolae appropriates a polished, civic visual language only to destabilise it from within.

As a feminist artist working with crochet – a medium historically coded as domestic and feminine – Gabriela Nicolae continues her strategy of reclaiming softness as a site of critique. The joke is not gratuitous; it points to how cities are branded, idealized, and consumed, while everyday language exposes more intimate, bodily, and less glamorous realities. By stitching slang into a decorative textile, she collapses high and low, official and vulgar, affection and irony. The result is playful but pointed. I🖤BUFUNDEȘTI becomes less a love letter to Bucharest and more a witty, tactile commentary on identity, urban pride, and the politics of naming – proof that even a small crocheted phrase can carry bite.