The Flight — Chapter 1: The Emotional Origin

This episode of The Charoen AArt Podcast features artist Ioana Vrabie reflecting on the personal experiences, memories, and ideas that shaped her exhibition, The Flight.

When I think about The Flight emotionally, I think it begins with a quiet, persistent longing. The departure of The Flight was, in many ways, an uncomfortable reality I wanted to escape from as a child.

At the same time, I carried the longing for a destination that was not really a specific place, but rather a feeling of home, a feeling of stillness, emotional truth, and belonging.

It was something I could only savor very briefly, sometimes through contemplating light, atmosphere, a landscape, or simply through the fleeting sensation of being fully present somewhere for a moment.

I grew up stretched between two value systems, suspended between two languages and two countries, Romania and Italy in the '80s and '90s, struggling to develop a stable sense of identity. Much later in life, I discovered the term third culture child, and it resonated deeply with both my experience and my inner conflict.

All of this unfolded within a conflictive and controlling environment that very early on made me want to run away emotionally, mentally, and eventually physically, too. After leaving my original home, my life became characterized by constant movement and instability. I moved more than 30 times, lived in four different countries, and later worked as a flight attendant for eight years, traveling continuously around the world.