Hosted by Mobius Gallery, Bucharest
Artists: Monira Al Qadiri, Anca Bucur, Chlorys, Bogdana Dima, Adrian Ganea,
Maria Guță, Nona Inescu, Katja Novitskova, Simina Oprescu, Jenna Sutela
Exhibition dates: 15 September - 15 October 2021
Exhibition opening: 15 September, 5 pm - 9 pm
Living Content is pleased to present ‘Under Pressure’, a project supported by Mobius
Gallery , that brings together ten visual and sound artists that consider through their
practices narratives of transformation in a time of intensifying mass extinction. Launching in
Bucharest, Romania, the project’s main strategy is to focus on locality and to engage a web of local and international relations and narratives, outside of the familiar contemporary art
epicenters.
With the largest surface of virgin forests, Romania is Europe’s last bastion of biodiversity,
but it currently faces unprecedented ecological challenges. As a developing country ripped
apart by corruption, its economic interests are often falsely depicted in a conflicting
relationship with the protection of natural areas. The current and ongoing concerns include
the uncontrolled exploitation of forests, extensions of surface mining, over-exploitation of
non-renewable resources, fish-poaching in the Danube Delta, and the explosion of
populations of invasive species that result from both climate change and human
interventions. Human development and welfare are interconnected in complex and
sometimes unpredictable ways with these ecosystems. While this is hardly news, when it
comes to scientific data and statistics about the climate crisis, the majority of us barely know
how to process this information, let alone transform it into action.
To quote Timothy Morton: “All art is ecological”. Using art as an interpretation of reality
might prove to be a useful way, even a coping strategy, to grow ecological awareness and to
better equip us to experience the uncanniness of the fact that we find ourselves at the edge of a sixth extinction, unknowingly and unwillingly set in motion by the Neolithic Revolution.
Thus, Under Pressure is a project that does not pretend to offer solutions as ecological
practicums; it rather conceives itself as a collection of poetic explorations that look into a
potential reconciliation with what it means to be human in the age of climate crisis.
Following and researching the evolution of technological development, some of the artists
included in this project propose new frameworks for a better understanding of the times we
live in, while others deconstruct ideological narratives, focusing instead on capturing the
lyrical materiality of the world. Altogether, through storytelling, the artists included in the
exhibition contribute to the project’s goal: that is to germinate a mind of curiosity locally and
internationally and to practice reimagining the multitude of different ways of being in the
world.
The project is composed of an exhibition hosted by Mobius Gallery in
Bucharest, an online platform created by Wednesday Studio, and public
programming that cross-pollinates the project’s online and offline
environments throughout September and October.
Living Content: Under Pressure is founded and curated by Adriana Blidaru and co-
curated by Tatiana Moise.
Find out more:
https://underpressure.livingcontent.online/
www.facebook.com/mobius.contemporaryartgallery
www.instagram.com/mobiusgallery/
www.instagram.com/livingcontent_online
Media partners: Scena9, DOR, Revista Arta, Kajet, Observator Cultural, Radio România
Cultural și Cultura la dubă, Greenpeace, Asociația Kontakt
The project is co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund* and the
Romanian Cultural Institute New York. Proudly supported by Goethe-Institut Bucharest.
*The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project, nor for how the results of the project might be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the grant.
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Artists
Adrian Ganea (b. 1989, Romania) is drawn to the unreal, intrigued by the magic of the
intangible and the ethereal, he seeks the sorcery that incarnates the virtual into solid matter.
His practice ranges from designing scenography and sculptures to programming CG
simulations and composing videos. He graduated from UDK Berlin, receiving a master’s
degree in Set Design with his project “Cyborgia” based on Paul B. Preciado’s essay: “How
Pompeii invented Pornography, The “Gabinetto Segreto” and the Sexopolitical Foundations
of the Modern European Metropolis”. He is also a founding member of the artists’ group
virtuellestheater. Adrian lives and works between Cluj and Berlin.
Anca Bucur (b. 1989, Romania) is an artist and poet who works indeterminately with
different media. With a background in literature and theory, her practice is multidisciplinary
and unfolds across the material-semiotic patterns that political ecologies of matter bring to
the surface. Her work is research-based and spreads to cover territories such as objects and
sound installations, performance, and poetry & theory writings. She is editor and co-founder at frACTalia press. Currently, her practice is informed by eco-feminist new materialist
vocabularies. Her poetry book Tractatus is scheduled to appear at the end of 2021 at
frACTalia press. Anca lives and works in Bucharest.
Bogdana Dima (b. 1990, Romania) is a multilateral artist with a background in classical
and contemporary music, currently active in Bucharest’s free improvisation music scene.
Interested in syncretic art, she is a multi-instrumentalist (she plays piano, percussion,
accordion, saxophone, violin), a musician, and a performer, looking to develop a deep
understanding of the complexity of colors, melodic tones, and vibrant fabrics. Her
composition is an ostinato, with polyrhythms and a subtle juxtaposition of songs and
polyphonies that work in harmony. Bogdana lives and works in Bucharest.
Chlorys (b. 1993, Romania) is a musical & visual entity, part of Queer Night family, Shape Platform artist in 2017, and since 2016 until present, a founding member of Corp. platform, with a main focus on representing and promoting queer identities (trans, nonbinary etc.). She has been a Noods Radio resident for three years, hosting Alien Flora, a show inspired by the traveling of seeds or spores making their way through space, with the final purpose of laying on the fertile and inconspicuous soil of Terra. As a direct quote from the sci-fi horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, she tries to evoke an esoteric atmosphere, incarnated in vocal musical works that blend with ambient, 1990s aesthetics, and beyond. Chlorys operates from Bucharest.
Jenna Sutela (b. 1983, Finland) works with words, sounds, and other living media, such as
Bacillus subtilis nattō bacteria and the “many-headed” slime mold Physarum polycephalum.
Her audiovisual pieces, sculptures, and performances seek to identify and react to precarious
social and material moments, often in relation to technology. Sutela's work has been
presented internationally at museums and art contexts, including Guggenheim Bilbao,
Moderna Museet, Serpentine Galleries, and, most recently, Shanghai Biennale and Liverpool
Biennial. She is a Visiting Artist at The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) in 2019-21. Jenna currently lives and works in Berlin.
Katja Novitskova (b. 1984, Estonia) tackles in her work the complexity and eventual
failures of depicting the world through technologically driven narratives. By uniting art and
science to the level of nature, Novitskova brings awareness to the mediation and
representation tools used to depict these realms. Her work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions including Kunstfort, Vijfhuizen, mutagen.xyz, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; Powerlong Museum, Shanghai; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Baltic Triennial, Vilnius; the Estonian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, and The Public Art Fund, New York, amongst others. Katja lives and works in Amsterdam.
Maria Guta (b. 1983, Romania)’s work looks into mechanisms of self-representation and
self-promotion as a strategic form of public identity. A passionate researcher of celebrity
culture and new forms of fame and influence created through social media, she investigates
concepts such as beauty, eternal youth, and immortality, often placing herself both behind
and in front of the camera. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from The National University
of Arts in Bucharest and a MA in Art Direction from École cantonale d’art de Lausanne
(ECAL). Her most recent works were presented at Scena9, Bucharest; Istituto Svizzero,
Milan; Sundance Film Festival - New Frontier; Locarno Film Festival; GIFF - Geneva Film
Festival; Swissnex, San Francisco; Gessnerallee Zürich; HeK, Basel. Maria currently lives and
works in Neuchatel.
Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983, Senegal) is a Kuwaiti visual artist born in Senegal and educated
in Japan. In 2010, she received a Ph.D. in intermedia art from Tokyo University of the Arts,
where her research was focused on the aesthetics of sadness in the Middle East, stemming
from poetry, music, art, and ritual practices. Her work explores unconventional gender
identities, petro-cultures and their possible futures, as well as the legacies of corruption.
Monira has shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions including Schinkel Pavillon,
Berlin; MoMA, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Migros Museum, Zurich; MoMA PS1, New
York; Haus Der Kunst, Munich; Kunstverein Göttingen, Göttingen; Gasworks, London; Athr
Gallery, Jeddah, Sultan Gallery, Kuwait; Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo. She currently lives and
works in Berlin.
Nona Inescu (b. 1991, Romania) works with photography, objects, installations, and video
to define contemporary relationships between the human body and its environment through
the lens of posthumanism. Concepts such as geological time and our relationship with the
environment, compose in her practice an aesthetic language of contemporary coexistence in
a biological techno-sphere. Nona studied at Chelsea College of Arts & Design in London, the
Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and at the National University of Arts in Bucharest
and exhibited internationally at Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn; Peles Empire, Berlin; SpazioA,
Pistoia; Künstlerhaus Bremen, Bremen; Savvy Contemporary, Berlin; FRAC des Pays de la
Loire, Carquefou; Art Encounters Biennale, Timișoara; Kunstverein Nuremberg, amongst
others. Nona currently lives and works between Bucharest and Berlin.
Simina Oprescu (b. 1993, Romania) is a sound and mixed-media artist interested in the
sound’s ability to radically change our understanding of images. Her practice focuses on
several topics: from how the still and the moving images enhance one another, to the use of
sound as a medium of expression. An increasingly visible presence on the international
electronic music scene, Simina is a SHAPE alumni artist at Platform for Innovative Music
and Audiovisual Art from Europe; and holds a Nomination at Phonurgia Nova, Pierre
Schaeffer. She currently lives between Bucharest and Berlin, where she is starting a Master's
program in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at UDK Berlin.
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