Postcards from America

Dan Perjovschi grew up during Nicolae Ceausescu's autocratic regime in communist Romania. He became known in 1991 for his drawings and political cartoons in Revista 22, the leading Romanian resistance newspaper. Today he is widely recognized for his large-scale drawing installations, utilizing the psychology of laughter to comment on social, political, and cultural conditions at the local, national, and global levels.

Perjovschi made Postcards from America during a trip to the United States. He explains:

"Postcards from America is a happy testimony of a trip I made cross-country as part of a USIA grant, which allowed me to travel east, west, north, and south, to big cities, middle-of-nowhere towns, and coast to coast from New York to Topanga Canyon and from San Francisco to New Orleans. It was fantastic. My first encounter with the enormity and diversity of America was like a kid's adventure book, including a 4 a.m. shuttle launch in Cape Canaveral, my first fast-food dinner, a visit to MoMA, a meeting with [artist] Chris Burden in Los Angeles, and a biking excursion in Florida. I enjoyed every second of that trip. After making the grand tour, I had a one-month residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts, where I made an installation of [over] five hundred drawings. I was seduced by America, so I called the series Postcards. I used colored paper, and each sheet was the size of a postcard."