Pavel Braila Pavel Brăila
Pavel Brăila (b. 1971) is a Moldovan visual artist. He studied at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, The Netherlands, but returned to Moldova to make artistic films. In 2002 his film Shoes for Europe was selected for documenta11.
In Shoes for Europe, Braïla gives a demonstration of the differences in cultural and economic identity in Eastern and Western Europe. At the tiny railway station of Ungheni, along the border between Moldova and Romania, the track width of the Russian train from Moldavia needs to be converted to the standard width used in Romania and Western Europe. Working clandestinely – it is officially forbidden to film in Moldavia – the artist filmed the laborious transition of the train from East to West, along with the enormous amount of manpower needed to complete the adaptation.
Brăila premiered his film Shoes for Europe for the evening Exploring the fringes of Europe on 6 June 2014 at Framer Framed, in collaboration with Satellietgroep and European Alternatives. Brăila also returned to documenta14 to show his work The Golden Snow of the Sochi Olympics (2014).