Principal investigator
Cristian Nae, Ph. D. Associate Professor, George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași
Cristian Naeis associate professor at the National University of Arts ”George Enescu” in Iași, Romania, where he teaches courses on contemporary art history, critical theory, visual and exhibition studies. He has benefited from scholarships and research grants from the Erste Foundation (Vienna), the Romanian Council of Scientific Research (CNCS-UEFISCDI), the CAA-Getty International Program, the Getty Foundation (Los Angeles) and New Europe College (Bucharest). Currently, he is senior advisor in the project Periodization in the History of Art and its Conundrums. How to tackle them in East-Central Europe (New Europe College, Bucharest), supported by the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative. His latest studies appeared in Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe (2019) and in edited volumes published by de Gruyter (2020, forthcoming) and Routledge (2018). Nae edited the book (In)Visible Frames. Rhetorics and Experimental Exhibition Practices in Romania 1965-1989 (Idea, 2019). Nae also curated Unfinished Conversations on the Weight of Absence, the exhibition marking Romania’s participation in the 58th Venice Biennale (2019).
Young researchers
Katalin Cseh-Varga, Ph. D. Lecturer at University of Viena
Katalin Cseh-Varga is a historian and theoretician of visual, intermedia and performance art with a focus on socialist Central Europe, especially Hungary. She is currently working as a Hertha Firnberg Fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and holds a lecturer position at the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. Katalin is about to finish a book entitled The Hungarian Avant-Garde in Late Socialism: Art of the Second Public Sphere (I.B.Tauris, forthcoming). Her postdoctoral research project focuses on thinking about art in Central and Eastern Europe during state socialism. Besides being active as a project coordinator and editor, Katalin presents and publishes extensively on art theory and methodology in late socialist East-Central Europe, intellectual history during state socialism, public sphere theory in the post-totalitarian condition, performance and intermedia art, as well as archival studies.
Magda Radu, director, Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest
Magda Radu is a curator and art historian based in Bucharest. She is one of the founders and co-curator of the program Salonul de proiecte, which functioned between 2011 and 2015 at MNAC Anexa and is now an independent initiative located in the Universul Palace in Bucharest. She edited (or co-edited) several exhibitions catalogues and books, among which: Art in Romania Between 1945-2000. An Analysis from Today’s Perspective (2016), subREAL (2015), Dear Money (2014) and André Cadere / Andrei Cădere (2011). In the last few years she also curated exhibitions at institutions including MUSAC, Leon; Spinnerei, Leipzig; and Photo España, Madrid. She was the curator of the Romanian Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2017).
Daria Ghiu, Associate Lecturer, CESI, University of Bucharest
Daria Ghiu is an art historian, art critic, and a cultural journalist, based in Bucharest, Romania. She holds a PhD degree from the National University of Arts in Bucharest, with a thesis on the history of the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, coordinated by Prof. Anca Oroveanu. Between 2010 and 2013 she had a scholarship from SIK-ISEA (Swiss Institute for Art Research) in Zürich, part of a team coordinated by Prof. Beat Wyss. In 2016 she had received a research grant from CNCS-UEFISCDI (Romanian National Research Council). She participated in international conferences organized in Berlin, Zürich, London, Venice, Budapest, Bucharest, Cluj. In 2015, she published In this Pavilion One Can See Art. Romania at the Venice Biennale (Idea Publishing House, Cluj). She published studies in several catalogues and antologies and she was the editor of a book written by Dan Perjovschi. Since 2007, she has written art reviews for various local and international art publications. At Radio Romania Cultural she signs numerous interventions and interviews and since January 2017 she has been the radio author of Arte frumoase [Fine Arts] weekly program. She is an editor of Casa Radio Publishing House. Occasionally, she curates art exhibitions, the most recent is the ‘Black and White’ Biennial, at the Art Museum in Satu Mare (October, 2017). Since 2016 she is an associate professor at CESI – Center of Excellence in Image Studies, University of Bucharest.
Caterina Preda, Ph. D. Lecturer, University of Bucharest
Caterina Preda is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest where she teaches undergraduate courses on Latin American politics, Art and politics, and a graduate course on Cultural memory in South America and Eastern Europe. Her research is interdisciplinary and deals with art in dictatorships, artistic memory in post-dictatorships in South America and Eastern Europe (Chile and Romania), cultural memory, post-communism, and Latin American studies. Her most recent book compares the relationship between art and politics during the dictatorships in Chile and Romania and is published by Palgrave in 2017. Her most recent research project (2015-2017) dealt with the case of the Romanian Visual Artists Union (UAP) ”From the state artist to the artist dependent on the state: the Union of Visual Artists (of Romania) 1950-2010 – the Bucharest branch.” Her current research project deals with the “Transregional remembrance of dictatorships: restoring human dignity through artistic practices in South America and Eastern Europe” (2018-2020) http://transregional-artistic-memory.caterinapreda.ro
Diana Mărgărit, Ph. D., Associate Porfessor, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași
Diana Mărgărit works as an associate professor at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in the Department of Political Science, International Relations and European Studies, where she lectures on social movements, political ideologies and international organizations. She obtained her PhD in political science in 2011, with a thesis on the conceptual mutations of democracy between the nation-state paradigm and the supranational and global political level. She wrote On the Edges of Democracy. From nation-state to the global sphere [in Romanian], 2013 and co-authored (with A. Carpinschi) a book on International Organizations [both in Romanian and English editions], 2011. She has also co-edited (with A. Tofan) the volume entitled The Bestiary of Power [in Romanian], 2014. Her areas of interest include social movements in the 21st century, with a special focus on the Romanian contentious phenomenon since 2012, civil society, and civil disobedience. These past few years, she has published various articles and studies on the most recent Romanian protests. At the same time, she has participated in scientific or artistic events where she gave presentations on the relationship between art, protest culture and civil disobedience (Conferences: The Ethics of Photography and Politics of the Image in Times of Crisis 2016, Counter-monumentality: re-imagining critical intervention 2018; Mobile Biennale: The Tour of Moldova in 7 Days 2017).
Lavinia German, Ph. D. Lecturer, George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași
Lavinia German is a founder member of the Centre of Contemporary Photography from Iași and lecturer at the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design Iași, in the didactic field of artistic language, photography and video, and a collaborator of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Sciences, University “Al.I. Cuza” Iași. Her PhD research focused on the visual strategies of photographic practices. Her activity in recent years reflects the interest in the contemporary forms of the photographic image as means of communication and its installational nature. She is a curator of local and national exhibitions addressed to young artists (Iași, Cluj), among which: ”Pasaj” (2016), ”EV>V” (2015); ”Despre plan şi despre desfăşurarea lui” (2014). From 2014 until 2015, she was part of the production team of the project .aparat. (Iași) and curated the exhibition aparat.focus: Rainer Komers.
Ph. D Students
Mădălina Brașoveanu, National University of Arts, Bucharest