MA FINE ARTS
Iulia Bucuresteanu – Somewhere in Draculaland
by Iulia Bucuresteanu
Somewhere in Draculaland explores how the figure of Dracula shaped the Western construction of Eastern Europe through imperialist and neo-gothic frameworks. It examines how these narratives persist today through Hollywood-driven, pseudo-folkloric images that reinforce cultural hierarchies. Drawing on the figure of the vampire and its associations with contagion, otherness, and invasion, this project traces how these images emerge from late 19th-century anxieties and continue to circulate. Somewhere in Draculaland focuses on the way these representations detach from their literary origins and are reintroduced as pseudo-folkloric truths, creating a cycle in which identity is reduced to mere recognizability, to the benefit of Western cultural authority.
