Brain Bloom
08.03-10.04.2026
Teodora Dobrotă
Fabric and fabrication of memory
Pavilion-style installation: veil, tulle, galvanised steel bar
23 m x 9 m
Team: Maria Eross, Alexandra Ispas, Maria Marinache
Once they pass through the fog of forgetting, individual memories are carried along the production line of memory, subjected to deformations and metabolic transformations until they can no longer recognise themselves. The machinic process becomes organic as the smooth and undifferentiated surface of the collective fog becomes populated by nodules of no one’s memories: the semblance of a remembered time. The factory remembers that from the very beginning it was a body, the body, that it was fabricated. The trajectory takes the form of a circuit, of repetition and transformation through repetition, and forgetting becomes once again a generative process, the zero point of creation.
This veil has consumed bodies; it will continue to consume them, each one altering its seemingly immutable volume. If there were an entrance, it would bear the motto: “Abandon all, you who enter here.” If there were an exit, above it would be written: “Collect yourselves.” But the entrance and the exit are the same, identical points in an unbroken circuit: “Abandon all and collect yourselves.” I have always been here, but I forgot; we will have to forget better.
Vlad Dragne & Maria Mitulescu
MOV_0000
Video installation
5 screens, various sizes
2026
We tune the depths of memory to the depths of digital archives.
I have collected lint of memory: YouTube videos with two views; they look directly at you, in the intimacy of moments you may have forgotten you once lived; I remember them.
About the toy found deep inside a cereal box, the one you omit when you think about the breakfasts you had throughout your childhood; forgetting is a rigid, mechanised process, the cursor splits in two until it becomes a foggy tunnel.
Archives that no longer belong to those who compose them. They are lost, transfer after transfer, from one tape to another, from one channel to the next.
The easier it is for you to count the pixels, the harder it becomes to remember.
VLAD DRAGNE is a visual artist who uses alternative photographic techniques and custom-built equipment to investigate themes such as memory, estrangement, and reconciliation with the past, employing intersectionality as a means of understanding the complexity of contemporary life.
MARIA MITULESCU (b. 2004, Bucharest, Romania) is a film directing student in the Bachelor program at the National University of Theatre and Film "I.L. Caragiale". Passionate about video art, editing, graphics, production and costume design, they’re usually in charge of every last visual detail of her film projects.
Works towards the supersaturation and deconstruction of the cinema screen, drawing upon from deep inside her (literally).
Vlad Dragne
GENERATION LOSSLESS
Series of analogue photographs, silver gelatin prints on canvas
3 sets of 6 images
24 × 30 cm
2026
A retold memory tends to simplify and distill itself: details fade, nuances evaporate. The repetition of a memory is no longer memory itself, but the memory of memory: increasingly faint, increasingly blurred. What do we truly remember from childhood?
Maria Eröss & Lăcră Grozăvescu
Memoria Scindată (Split Memory)
Mixed media
100 × 150 cm (large cutout parchment)
40 × 90 cm (small cutouts)
2026
The project departs from the idea of the palimpsest as a form of collective memory, in which history accumulates in layers. Each painterly or textile intervention becomes a negotiation with what has already existed. Painting functions as an affective map, an open visual archive, while embroidery intervenes as a tactile layer that does not erase but activates the underlying image. The thread thus becomes an instrument of reading and rewriting.
The result of this process takes the form of a contemporary parchment: a stratified space in which the two practices intersect and generate a shared memory, continually open to transformation. Within the dynamics of its making, collaboration becomes an integral part of the concept: through repeated and synchronized gestures, they construct not only the visual surface but also a territory of shared experience. The interweaving of threads reflects the intertwining of their individual trajectories, while meaning gradually emerges from this continuous superimposition.
MARIA ERÖSS (b. 2001, Iași, Romania) is a visual artist currently based in Bucharest. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Painting from the National University of Arts in Bucharest and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree within the same institution.
Her artistic practice explores the complex relationship between body, memory, and perception, often investigating how individual experience intersects with collective consciousness. Working primarily with painting, experimental drawing, and installation, she constructs images that balance fragility with visual tension. Her works frequently juxtapose attraction and discomfort, addressing themes such as identity, liminal states, and the impact of environment and technology on the senses.
LĂCRĂ GROZĂVESCU (b. 1996, Romania) is a visual artist working with photography, embroidery, video, and installation. Her artistic practice explores themes such as identity, memory, trauma, and feminism. Through imagery, she brings personal stories and collective emotions to the surface, creating works rooted in intimate and autobiographical spaces.
She has exhibited in Italy, the UK, Greece, Japan, and the US, and has participated in mentorship programs in the Netherlands and Romania. In 2025, she was selected as a Fresh Eyes Talent by GUP Magazine and has been featured in international publications such as Fisheye Magazine, Lenscratch, and L’œil de la photographie.
She holds an MA in Photography and Dynamic Image from the Bucharest National University of Arts and a BA in Foreign Languages from the University of Bucharest. She lives and works in Bucharest.
Andreea Grigoraș
Making love to whatever I consider holy
Mixed media, 999 silver, rose quartz, textile tassel
54 cm length, 93 grams
2026
The work takes as its starting point the object of prayer beads as a meeting point between ritual, memory, and corporeality, proposing a critical inquiry into the ways in which sacredness is socially, culturally, and affectively constructed. The artistic intervention consists of replacing the traditional beads with phallic forms crafted in silver. This transformation does not aim at a simple subversion of a religious symbol, but rather at a reassessment of the relationship between spirituality and the body, between interiority and eroticism, and between the institutionalised memory of the sacred and personally lived memory.
The chosen materials, silver and rose quartz, function not merely as formal supports, but as symbolic extensions of the conceptual approach. Silver, traditionally associated with purity, liturgical objects, and a certain ritual nobility, maintains a connection to the register of the sacred, while shifting it into an ambivalent territory where the cool sheen of metal encounters an explicitly erotic form. At the same time, rose quartz, symbolically linked to love, tenderness, and healing, introduces a dimension of vulnerability and intimacy.
ANDREEA GRIGORAȘ (b. 2000, Romania) studied BA and MA at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, city where she currently lives and works. Her artistic practice is based on distinct processes of introspection and conceptualization of her own experiences. Despite the serious subjects she deals with, such as sexuality, femininity and power games, her approaches are playful, thus avoiding to remain in a taboo, undiscussed area.
Andreea Grigoraș & Lăcră Grozăvescu & Elena Maxemciuc
The Aftermath
Mixed-media installation, photography, textile, graphics, steel
Variable dimensions
2026
The Aftermath speaks about what remains after something disappears. Not the moment of loss, but that suspended space in which the body tries not to fall apart. The photographs hang in the air like incomplete evidence, while drawings come over them like attempts to fill the gaps. It’s like editing an old photo and adding layer after layer, yet no filter takes you back to where you once were.
At the centre lies an artificial synapse, wrapped in wire and copper, like an improvised brain trying to remember how to function. Red threads extend from it in every direction, connecting images, empty spaces, traces. It looks like the map of a conversation once held with someone important, but now it no longer remembers exactly what was said—only that it mattered.
The images are not documents. They are things that cannot be archived, only felt. The kind of things that remain in the body, not in the photo gallery.
In The Aftermath, memory does not try to compete with reality. It only touches it lightly, as if asking: “Are you still there?”
ELENA MAXEMCIUC (b. 2001, Republic of Moldova) is a visual artist and curator based in Bucharest. She graduated from the Faculty of Art History and Theory at UNArte and completed a master’s degree in History and Practice of International Relations at the University of Bucharest.
Working across various media such as painting, drawing, illustration, photo-video, and installation, she investigates processes of hybridisation between the natural and the built environment, as well as the impact of informational infrastructures on perception and the formation of personal and collective consciousness. Feminism constitutes a central theoretical framework in her artistic positioning, particularly through the analysis of power relations. Her approach takes shape as a composite curatorial discourse in which theoretical inquiry structures both her artistic practice and exhibition projects, while the image functions as a symbolic space of dialogue around memory, identity, and transformation.
Active in the independent curatorial field, she is involved in photo-video documentation, cultural mediation, and collaborative projects within /SAC Bucharest.
Vlad Hodrea
healing frequencies for robots
audio installation
16:50 min
2026
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VLAD HODREA (b. 1999) is a cultural communicator and sound artist; at times, a journalist and DJ. They work with field recordings and voice, write personal essays, and explore forgotten archives, guided by an interest in memory and its fragility. Music, in its many forms, is their safe zone — proof that even what feels distant or unsettling one day can return later with unexpected intimacy. They currently run communications for Rezidența9 & Fundația9 and collaborate with Scena9 & Școala9.
Anne-Marie Lolea & Elena Maxemciuc
Production: Ilie Maxemciuc
The Architecture of Remembering
Mixed media installation, steel, textile
Variable dimensions
2026
The work presents a fragile architectural sculpture made of wire and red thread, where the forms of houses appear as open, skeletal structures. Reduced to simple outlines, the volumes suggest unstable spaces composed of fragments of dwelling, evoking an architecture shaped by memory rather than permanence.
The starting point of the piece was an image often associated with childhood, the one of the moving structures from Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) by Hayao Miyazaki, where architecture appears as a living organism assembled from disparate parts.
Similarly, the structure gathers fragments of houses into an imagined space. The thin thread evokes the domestic interior and the memory of objects that once belonged to someone, entering into dialogue with the installation practices of Chiharu Shiota and Isabelle Bonté.
Through suspended elements and delicate balance, the work recalls the intimate universe of childhood, reminiscent of a cradle mobile. Here, the house becomes less a physical structure and more an image of familiarity and memory: a fragile constellation of lines and traces suggesting protection, belonging, and the persistence of lived space.
ANNE-MARIE LOLEA holds a bachelor’s degree in Art History and is currently pursuing a master’s program at CESI, where she is developing a research project focused on contemporary art interventions in heritage spaces. She works as a curatorial assistant at /SAC Bucharest and is also active as an independent curator. She occasionally writes exhibition reviews and is interested in collaborative projects, as well as in the ongoing exploration of the cultural scene.
ILIE MAXEMCIUC (b. 2001, Republic of Moldova) is a visual artist and scenographer working across visual arts, stage design, and art education. He is currently studying at the Faculty of Pedagogy in Fine Arts at the Ion Creangă State Pedagogical University.
His artistic activity includes scenographic collaborations with theatre institutions such as the independent Clounella Theatre, the Mihai Eminescu National Theatre, the A.P. Chekhov State Russian Drama Theatre (Chișinău), and the Nadejda Aronețkaia State Drama Theatre (Tiraspol). He has also contributed to productions as part of the Decor Time team, as well as to projects developed by YOUBESC Creative Institute, K Lumea, Jurnal TV, and Magnet Production.
In his artistic practice, Ilie Maxemciuc explores the relationship between the real and the imaginary, integrating theatrical props and scenographic constructions with a narrative dimension. Through stage models with poetic and playful qualities, the artist proposes new ways for viewers to perceive and interpret theatrical space, constructing visual worlds shaped by imagination.
Patricia Marchiș
A Study in Alteration
Audio installation
15:58 min
2026
The work explores the way memory transforms through the simple act of remembering, treating sound as a sculptural material, subject to modelling and deformation over time. Built on repetitive minimalist motifs, the piece does not follow a linear development, but rather unfolds as a process of gradual alteration.
Each return of the sonic material introduces subtle deviations – shifts in timbre or texture – suggesting that memory is not a fixed archive, but an active mechanism of rewriting.
Repetition does not reinforce the original form; instead, it destabilises it. Over time, the structure becomes a version of its own version, and the distance between origin and present becomes impossible to measure.
The piece thus proposes an auditory experience of degradation as well as continuous reconstruction – a space in which sound loses its certainty and becomes the memory of itself.
PATRICIA MARCHIȘ is a musician with a complex artistic practice situated at the intersection of classical music and jazz. A saxophonist with a distinctive stage presence, as well as a composer for theatre and film, she develops projects marked by a modern aesthetic grounded in expressivity and innovation. She is the leader of the jazz fusion group Marquis Collective, with which she has performed on the stages of some of the most important music festivals in Romania, as well as in numerous international contexts.
Ruxandra Nițescu
povești (ne)așezate [(un)settled stories]
audio-video installation
11:23 min
2026
The project is an audio work constructed from a collective story, written from our shared and overlapping memories, like an auditory palimpsest. The text does not aim to faithfully reconstruct an event, but rather to map the distortions, gaps, and contradictions that emerge when memory is shared, negotiated, and rewritten among multiple bodies.
The work approaches memory not as a static archive, but as an organic process. The resulting story functions as a fragile archive, in which incoherence, repetition, and absurdity are not flaws, but structures of meaning.
The work functions as an inquiry into identity. It explores the question: if one’s memories can be mistaken for another’s, where does the self end? The piece suggests that identity is a form of “borrowing” from the surrounding environment, a sum of the things and experiences encountered.
RUXANDRA NIȚESCU received her bachelor’s degree in 2023 from the National University of Arts in Bucharest – the Photo-Video Department, and then, in 2025, finished her master’s in Photography and Dynamic Image, within the same institution. Her artistic practice is shaped as a form of affective archaeology, inside which fragments of experience, memory and sensibility are recovered and reconfigured into a dense, layered visual discourse. Interested in the manner in which vulnerability insinuates itself into bodies, space and language, the artist probes into themes of loneliness, abandonment, illness and trauma – not as mere subjects, but as living presences that shape the way in which we perceive the world. Within this research, media such as photography, sound, drawing and printmaking become instruments of multivocal visual writings, in which each material bears a distinct affective load.
Răzvan Pîrcălăbescu
Untitled
Steel, polystyrene, clay, soil, stones, hay, photographs
350 cm height x 80 cm diameter
2026
A vertical clay spiral, interrupted and cracking over time, in constant transformation, reflects the relationship between humans, the universe, and time. Earth, as the substrate of collective memory, intertwined with personal memory through photography, seeks to shape a universal memory.
RĂZVAN PÎRCĂLĂBESCU (b. 1997, Romania) is an artist based in Bucharest. He earned his bachelor's degree from the Painting Department at the National University of Arts in Bucharest.
He is a transdisciplinary artist who explores political tensions and the fragile relationship between perception and intention. Inspired by nature and by a rural childhood, marked by direct contact with the animals raised in his family’s household (cows, goats, pigs, chickens, pigeons..), he works with painting, drawing, and installation, using organic materials such as wool, soil, and hay to construct a tactile language that reconnects the urbanized individual with archaic forms of humanity.
His works, political within a posthuman register, reflect the impact of consumerism on identity, foregrounding the sincerity of gesture, imperfection, and fragile symbols. He has exhibited in Romania, Belgium, and Greece.
Anca Stoica
In the flesh you can still hear the past
Video, textile installation
9 min 43 sec
Image: Beatrice Păun
Editing: Mihnea Toma
The nucleus, the body, the memories. The nucleus, my present body, my current body that lives/re-lives the spaces in which I grew up, my childhood time in these spaces. I construct my memories through photographs, through the accounts of others. Otherwise, I do not remember. I do not remember periods of my life; the experiences have been erased.
What persists is the imprint of the place, the memory of the domestic space that surrounded me, that has seeped into me and left marks. The video component captures my physical presence in these spaces marked by temporal fragmentations and by discontinuous memories, but above all by the trauma that runs through them — forgetting becoming one of its mechanisms of survival. The survival of now and of before.
The presence of textiles in the exhibition space underscores the presence and the memory of those whose art was never exhibited, was never considered art, but simply domestic labour.
ANCA STOICA (b. June 13, 1999, Romania) is an emerging performer and choreographer active in the independent art scene. She is the co-founder of the artistic duo Platforma 13, alongside Sergiu Dita, an initiative dedicated to transdisciplinary experimentation. Her practices focus on the body and how socio-cultural contexts shape and modify bodily movement. Recurring themes in her work include the body in trauma, identity, sexuality, and the memory of domestic space.
She holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Choreographic Arts from the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” and attended the Dance and Performance Academy (2022–2023) at the National Dance Centre Bucharest. As an artist, she creates her own choreographic works and collaborates as a performer and choreographer in dance, theatre, and performance productions.
Her performances and works have been presented in Italy, Germany, the USA, Bulgaria, and Serbia.
Nadina Stoica
An Emotion Picture
Mixed media on canvas
90 x 120 cm
The diptych is constructed from still-frames of Documenteur by Agnès Varda, over which painterly gestures intervene within a surface dominated by blue. Fragments of the body, horizons, and ocean expanses overlap in a dense visual field, where the image becomes a catalyst for bodily memory. The blue functions both formally, as a unifying atmospheric layer, and symbolically, as a space of distance, melancholy, and affective immersion. The work explores the tension between archived imagery and the body’s organic response, revealing the fragile zone where digital memory activates a deeply somatic memory.
NADINA STOICA (b. 1997, Romania) is an artist from Constanța, currently based in Bucharest. She completed her bachelor’s and master’s studies in the Department of Photography and Dynamic Image at the National University of Arts in Bucharest.
Her practice centers on photography as a research-driven and transformative medium, situated at the intersection of image, language, and psychological states. Through an introspective approach, her work examines the subtle relationships between body and space, intimacy and landscape, and the construction of personal identity over time. Engaging with memory, perception, and emotional residue, her projects often evolve through observation, writing, and visual experimentation, positioning photography as both an investigative tool and a reflective process.
Nadina Stoica is a multidisciplinary artist whose works transition from photography to video, collage, installation, object or even poetry. She had many exhibitions, apparitions and interviews in well known galleries and museums, publications and art fairs in Romania, but also international exposure in cities like London, Bologna, Paris, Belgrade, Vien and others.