Ion Grigorescu: Body, Camera, Resistance
- RCI USA
- 19 hours ago
- 8 min read
Echoes and Distortions: Romanian Experimental Film and Video Art
About The Event
Part of the new series Echoes and Distortions: Romanian Experimental Film and Video Art, organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute in partnership with e-flux Screening Room, the screening+talk event introduces American audiences to a vital yet historically underrepresented field: Romanian experimental film and video art. The series begins with a focus on Ion Grigorescu, a central figure of the Romanian neo-avantgarde, whose work emerged under the constraints of the communist regime and remained largely unseen until after 1989.
Working in relative isolation, Grigorescu developed a singular practice across film, performance, and photography, in which the camera becomes both witness and interlocutor. His works—often staged in the privacy of his studio or in peripheral landscapes—use the artist’s own body as primary material, probing states of tension, vulnerability, and self-confrontation while encoding subtle forms of political dissent. Across these moving image works, tightly constructed actions give way to reflections on perception, doubling, and mediation, culminating in staged dialogues that test the limits of representation under authoritarianism.
The evening opens with a keynote address by MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci, titled Ion Grigorescu — Cinema at the Limits of the Self, followed by a screening of eight key works—Balta Albă, Aquatic, Boxing, Male/Female, Dialogue with President Ceaușescu, Family, Start, and Sleep. A panel discussion with Roxana Marcoci, Amy Bryzgel, and Lukas Brasiskis will expand on Grigorescu’s legacy within both Eastern European and global experimental contexts, with Romanian director Andreiana Mihail joining online. The program concludes with the documentary Boxing with Myself (dir. Andreiana Mihail), which offers an intimate portrait of the artist’s life and practice.
Presented in partnership with Gregor Podnar Gallery and Kinotopia, the evening sets the stage for the series as a whole, foregrounding practices shaped by constraint, experimentation, and critical reflection, and tracing how Romanian artists have engaged the moving image as a space of resistance, inquiry, and transformation.
Echoes and Distortions: Romanian Experimental Film and Video Art is a series curated by Andreea Drăghicescu, Romanian creative producer and cultural manager at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, in collaboration with Lukas Brasiskis, Curator of Video and Film at e-flux, that foregrounds the crucial role experimental moving image practices have played in shaping Romania’s visual culture, particularly under and after the constraints of the communist regime. In a context where artistic expression was often surveilled or restricted, experimental film and video became vital tools for introspection, coded dissent, and formal innovation, contributing significantly to the broader history of Romanian avant-garde and contemporary art. The series traces this lineage from pioneering figures such as Ion Grigorescu, Geta Brătescu, kinema ikon, Lia Perjovschi, or Decebal Scriba—artists who expanded the boundaries of image-making through performance, conceptual strategies, and film—toward a younger generation including artists like Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Mircea Cantor, Radu Jude, Adina Pintilie, Alex Mirutziu, and many others who continue to explore the moving image as a space for critical reflection and experimentation. By bringing together historical and contemporary perspectives, the program highlights how Romanian experimental film and video art has persistently negotiated issues of identity, politics, embodiment, and perception, establishing itself as a vital and evolving field within both national and international art histories.
Discover the Artist & the Films
ION GRIGORESCU (b. 1945, Bucharest, Romania) lives and works in Bucharest and is widely regarded as one of the most significant Romanian artists of the postwar period. Since 1967, his multidisciplinary practice—spanning photography, film, performance, and painting—has investigated the intersections of sexuality, the body, and politics against the backdrop of profound historical change. Working under Romania’s communist regime and continuing into the post-communist era, Grigorescu developed a deeply introspective and often radical artistic language, using his own body as both subject and medium to examine systems of control, identity, and personal freedom. By the late 1970s, he began recording his performances, focusing on ritualized, often solitary actions that blurred the boundaries between art and lived experience. These works move beyond conventional performance, entering the realm of the private and the existential, and offering a powerful, intimate perspective on life under surveillance and constraint. In more recent decades, Grigorescu’s practice has expanded to embrace themes of daily life, family, and spirituality. His photographs and films reflect a growing engagement with Orthodox religious traditions, revealing a contemplative dimension that complements the political urgency of his earlier work. Exhibited internationally at major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Venice Biennale, his work continues to resonate for its honesty, vulnerability, and enduring relevance.
Balta Albă. The poor district, long façades filled with equal windows, the peasants’ market – the state market; it feeds us. On the small streets, a playground for children.
Boxing. The characters know only where the opponent is, and the author waits for a chance to produce the blows. But they also hit with their feet, unsporting, to beat a fallen man!
Male/Female. A film for, or against, voyeurs; I assume they see fragments of nudity and wonder which sex it is. Classical architecture, a montage of details interpretable in a Freudian way.
Dialogue with President Ceaușescu. What kind of fake could be made in 1975 – two people with fixed ideas, alternating in a civilized manner. It turns out that one can speak with the dictator!
Family (this is not my title; there are several films; it is a theme). The family in silence. Movement passes from one to another, not abruptly, slowly, it does not break; I, the one who is filming, move from one to another, like from violin to piano to flute; they speak, now one, now another; the camera follows, it moves. But in the end the screen stands still, only the image moves.
Start. A start from below, a real start entering the world of film, rewound, doubled symmetrically into the left world, with an unforeseen ending- the return of reality – a muscular rupture.
Sleep. A hotel in Warsaw, a sarcophagus-like sofa: sleep is not in the other world, but immobility prevails. From time to time the body sets off, slowly.
Aquatic. Visual documentation like for primary school classes – steam, clouds, rain, upstream and downstream, horses, aquatic deities.
Discover the Director & the Documentary
Andreiana Mihail is a filmmaker with a rich art background. She is a BA graduate in Philosophy at Bucharest University and studied Philosophy of Art at the Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne. Currently she is enrolled in the Natural Language Processing Master Program at the Bucharest University, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Her work experience spans from curatorial work to that of a gallery owner and it was featured in some of the world`s most prestigious publications like The New York Times (article by Holland Cotter on Frieze New York 2012), The Financial Times, London Times (during Frieze London 2010 and 2011), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, amongst many others. As owner of Andreiana Mihail Gallery, she has curated and organized more than 30 exhibitions, and has participated to 22 editions of the most important art fairs, e.g. Art Basel, Art Brussels, Frieze Art Fair (London and New York), VIENNAFAIR / vienna contemporary, Liste Basel. She represented artists like: Ion Grigorescu (Venice Biennial, Berlin Biennial, Sao Paolo, museum shows and collections of MoMa New York, Tate Modern London, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw etc.), Adrian Ghenie (Contemporary Art Museum Denver, USA, Venice Biennial, 2015, SMAK, Ghent, Hermitage Museum, Sankt Petersburg), Ciprian Mureșan (Venice Biennial, Sydney Biennial, museum shows at SF MoMa, Tate Modern London, FRAC Champagne Ardenne, CAC Geneve, Centre Pompidou), Mona Vătămanu and Florin Tudor (Venice Biennial, Berlin and Istanbul Biennials, museum solo at Secession, Vienna, BAK, Utrecht etc.). She is the editor/producer of “Auto-da Fe” artist book by Ciprian Mureșan, presented at Art Basel, Art Statements 2008 (at Andreiana Mihail Gallery) and Venice Biennial, 2009. She has also edited Photography in the Circulatory System and co-edited together with Georg Schoellhammer Diaries (volumes I and II), both by Ion Grigorescu. After more than 14 years of fruitful collaboration with one of the pioneers of video art and visual artist Ion Grigorescu, Andreiana finished her first feature documentary, entitled “Boxing with Myself”.
“Boxing with Myself” (d. Andreiana Mihail, 2024) is a documentary that follows the life and work of the Romanian visual artist Ion Grigorescu, one of the pioneers of experimental art in Europe. The main themes of his art are relevant and authentic: dreams, private life, family, the fragilty of his own body, or getting old – featured in various mediums from painting, photography to film and installation. Ion Grigorescu’s works are part of the permanent collections of MoMa New York, Tate Modern London or Centre Pompidou Paris, among many others, and he is largely known to the international art public. “Boxing with Myself” is a film performance where the presence of the Filmmaker – who used to be Ion Grigorescu’s gallerist- converges with that of the Artist. From time-to-time Ion Grigorescu becomes the observer and commentator in regards to the film director, thus actively participating in this honest and blunt narration about his own life. There is no nostalgia or embellishment involved: it is just a cleansing anamnesis for both the public and the two makers of the film, inviting the audience to question their own evanescent existence, morality, and spirituality. Ultimately, the film interrogates the possible extent of the unpretentious recollection of our own biography.
Meet the Guests
Dr. ROXANA MARCOCI is Acting Chief Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art. She holds a PhD in art history, theory, and criticism from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Recent exhibitions she curated accompanied by major publications include LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity (2024); An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers (2023); Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear (2022). In 2010 Marcoci co-founded MoMA’s prestigious Forums on Contemporary Photography, an experimental platform for free-form critical discussions about the perspectives and scope of image-making among artists, curators, and cultural theorists. She has chaired the Central and Eastern European group (2013-2023) and is currently the co-Chair of the South-East and East Asia group of MoMA’s Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) program. A contributor to numerous art magazines, she has co-authored the three-volume Photography at MoMA (2015/17). Marcoci is currently at work on the exhibition Taking Back Our Space: Photographic Perspectives, opening at MoMA in September 2026.
AMY BRYZGEL is a Teaching Professor at Northeastern University, where she teaches modern and contemporary art with a focus on Eastern Europe. Her research centers on performance art in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, including body art, participatory practices, and socially engaged art. She is the author of Performance Art in Eastern Europe since 1960 (Manchester University Press, 2017), the first comprehensive academic study of the genre across the former communist and non aligned countries of the region. Her earlier books include Performing the East: Performance Art in Russia, Latvia and Poland Since 1980 (IB Tauris, 2013) and Miervaldis Polis (Neputns, 2015), the first monograph on the Latvian artist. Before joining Northeastern in 2022, Bryzgel held the position of Personal Chair in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen. She is a member of the ArtMargins Online editorial collective and the Arts and Humanities Peer Review Council, and she supervises doctoral research at several European universities.
LUKAS BRASISKIS is the Curator of Video and Film at e-flux, where he programs and moderates screenings, lectures, and discussions for both the e-flux Screening Room and the e-flux Film online platform. Since 2024, he is also served as the editor of the weekly online publication e-flux Film Notes, which explores the intersection of contemporary art and film through conversations with moving-image artists, theoretical reflections, and historical and experimental writings. Over the years, Lukas Brasiskis has curated and programmed exhibitions and screenings at art and film institutions worldwide, including MoMA (New York), Power Station of Art (Shanghai), SeMA (Seoul), Anthology Film Archives (New York), National Gallery of Art (Vilnius), Alternative Film/Video Festival (Belgrade), Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius), West Bund Museum/Pompidou (Shanghai), Tramway Contemporary Art Center (Glasgow), and TOP Museum (Tokyo), among others. He holds a PhD in Cinema Studies from New York University (2022) and have been teaching courses on moving-image art at NYU, Columbia University, and CUNY/Brooklyn College since 2017. His writing has appeared widely in academic books and journals, as well as in non-academic outlets. Most recently, he co-edited Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe (Berghahn Books, 2023) and Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running (Yale University Press, 2022). Based in New York, Lukas Brasiskis continues to explore the evolving relationship between contemporary art and cinema, seeking to bridge the gaps between the appreciation, curation, and study of the moving image.
