Romanian Art After the Iron Curtain
Histories, Experiments, and Transatlantic Connections
About the Event
The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, in collaboration with Nicodim Gallery, presents an evening exploring the complex relationship between art, political power, and cultural transformation in Romania, from the communist era to the present, and the transatlantic exchanges that have shaped its international presence.
Taking place at Nicodim Gallery, the event marks the New York launches of three significant publications: Visual Arts in Romania 1945–1989: With an Addendum 1990–2020 (Romanian Cultural Institute Publishing House, 2022), by Magda Cârneci; Zona Festival (PUNCH, 2025), by Ileana Pintilie; and ARTA magazine’s special double issue The American Dream (Nos. 78–79/2026), coordinated by Gabriela Mateescu and Charles Moore.
Bringing together Magda Cârneci, art historian, critic, and Editor-in-Chief of ARTA; Ileana Pintilie, professor, art historian, curator, and founder of the pioneering Zona performance art festival; Gabriela Mateescu, artist and Managing Editor of ARTA; and Irina Protopopescu, founder of New York’s SLAG Gallery, the evening will feature a conversation with Charles Moore, co-coordinator of ARTA’s special double issue The American Dream. Together, they will explore artistic experimentation under authoritarian rule, the profound transformations that followed 1989, and the networks of migration, exchange, and collaboration that have connected Romanian artists and gallerists to the international art world.
Moving between historical inquiry and contemporary perspectives, the conversation will examine how shifts in political power have transformed the conditions of artistic production, opened new possibilities for experimentation, and reshaped the ways Romanian art circulates internationally. Particular attention will be given to the evolving connections between Romania and the United States, and to the artists, institutions, and cultural networks that have shaped this transatlantic dialogue.
Discover the publications & the authors
Ileana Pintilie`s Zona Festival traces the legacy of Zona. Eastern Europe performance art festival that took place in Timișoara, Romania, between 1993 and 2002, years which were marked by a transition from communism to a new society built on different principles. Bringing together artists from the former “Eastern Bloc,” Zona became a space of encounters, a platform for theoretical discussions and postmodern art experiments, which displayed a remarkable diversity of artistic languages. The fall of the Berlin Wall, as Nicolas Bourriaud noted in his book 'The Radicant', was the first decisive step towards globalization and the generalization of postmodern thought. In the early 1990s, adopting subversive strategies helped artists overcome critical moments in totalitarian societies, which had been consolidated for decades in Eastern Europe. They combined techniques of expression such as pastiche, quotes, historical images, popular culture, or subcultures with personal mythologies. What resulted was often a critical mixture with an explosive effect. Body art became an appropriate language for critically analyzing stereotypes about the nation, religion, gender, or social prejudices and taboos. Body art facilitated the transfer of ideas and a dialogue with the audience, or it helped launch questions about identity politics. The concerns and intentions of the festival’s protagonists were built around political, social, and artistic topics that were debated between the East and the West.
Ileana Pintilie is a Romanian art historian, critic, curator, and professor at the Faculty of Arts and Design at the West University of Timișoara. A leading scholar of Romanian and Central European modern and contemporary art, she has contributed extensively to the study and international recognition of experimental and neo-avant-garde artistic practices under communism. A member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) since 2000, she served as Vice President of AICA Romania (2012–2020) and was a member of the editorial board of the American online journal ARTMargins (2000–2010). Her publications include Activism in Romania during Communism (2000), Ștefan Bertalan: Roads at the Crossroads (2011), Bertalan: Overlappings. Experimental Photography from the 1970s–1980s (2015), and Constantin Flondor: Wege zur Form (2022). As an independent curator, she has organized numerous influential exhibitions and international projects, including the Zona: Eastern Europe performance festival in Timișoara (1993–2002), Body and the East (Ljubljana, 1998), Shaping the Great City (Vienna and Los Angeles, 1999–2001), and Subversive Practices: Art under Conditions of Political Repression (Europe and South America). Through her scholarship and curatorial work, Pintilie has played an important role in bringing the often-overlooked artistic histories of Eastern Europe into broader international art-historical discourse.
Magda Cârneci’s Visual Arts in Romania 1945–1989: With an Addendum 1990–2020 is far more than a history of Romanian art—it is a powerful exploration of the relationship between artistic freedom, political power, and the resilience of human creativity. Spanning seventy-five years of dictatorship, revolution, and democratic transformation, this landmark study brings to light an extraordinary artistic history that has remained largely invisible to Western audiences. Challenging the traditional, Western-centered narrative of modern art, Magda Cârneci reveals how Romanian artists navigated ideological oppression, negotiated their independence, and reinvented their artistic identities in a rapidly changing world. Combining art history with political and social analysis, she restores Romanian visual culture to its rightful place within the broader story of European modernity. For American readers, this book is both a revelation and an invitation: to look beyond the Iron Curtain, to reconsider what we think we know about twentieth-century art, and to discover how creativity can endure even under the most restrictive political circumstances. Above all, it reminds us that the history of modern art cannot be complete until the voices and visions of those who created beyond the familiar centers of cultural power are finally seen, understood, and recognized.
Magda Cârneci is a Romanian writer, art historian, critic, and curator, and a prominent voice in Romanian contemporary art and cultural discourse. She earned her PhD in Art History from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1997. Throughout her distinguished career, she has held several important cultural and academic positions, including Director of the Institute of Art History in Bucharest (1990–1992), President of AICA Romania, the Romanian section of the International Association of Art Critics (2000–2005), and Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Paris (2007–2010). She has also served as Associate Professor at the National University of Arts in Bucharest and Editor-in-Chief of ARTA magazine. An internationally active curator, she has organized numerous exhibitions in Romania and abroad, including Cosmopolis: Contemporary Visual Arts from the Balkans (Thessaloniki, 2004–2005), Isidore Isou – Pour en finir avec la conspiration du silence (Paris, 2007), Art Embodied: Romanian Artists from the 80s (London, 2011), and Jardins intérieurs (Paris, 2012). Her landmark study, Visual Arts in Romania 1945–1989: With an Addendum 1990–2020, published in English in 2022, offers an essential perspective on the complex relationship between art, politics, and society in modern and contemporary Romania.
ARTA Magazine – Issue #78–79 (2026): The American Dream
ARTA, one of Romania’s leading visual arts publications, dedicates its 2026 double issue, The American Dream, to exploring the complexity, diversity, and evolving identity of contemporary art in the United States. Guest-curated by New York–based curator Charles Moore, this special edition moves beyond a conventional survey of American art to examine the United States as both a powerful cultural imaginary and a space where identities, histories, and aspirations are continuously negotiated. Bringing together American voices and perspectives from the Romanian diaspora, the issue explores the intersections of artistic expression, migration, belonging, and cultural transformation. More than a publication about American art, The American Dream creates a meaningful dialogue between two artistic worlds, challenging established narratives and opening new perspectives on what America represents today. At a time when questions of identity, freedom, and cultural belonging are increasingly urgent, this edition of ARTA serves as a bridge between Romanian and American contemporary art, celebrating the power of artistic exchange to transcend geographical and cultural boundaries.
Gabriela Mateescu is a Romanian artist and author who lives and works in Bucharest, working with video, installation, drawing and performance. Her work is feminist, autobiographical and self-referential, following the social and relational aspects of art, as a medium that creates affiliation, closeness and long-lasting friendships. Gabriela is the founder of the collective cultural support group Nucleu 0000, that began as an initiative for her colleagues and generation to find spaces around the city to explore and exhibit and has grown to become an NGO, based on relational art, that constructs different projects around feminism, building artistic collectives, gatherings and workshops, interdisciplinarity, exhibitions, conferences, creating the context for artists to meet and collaborate. She is the co-founder of the platform promoting Romanian digital artists Spam-index.com and has coordinated a multitude of collaborative projects involving local artists, occupying different spaces and pop-ups. Since 2020 Gabriela is Managing Editor, collaborator and designer for Revista ARTA. spam-index.com/
Charles Moore is a New York–based art historian, curator, author, and cultural critic whose work explores the intersections of contemporary art, identity, race, abstraction, and social justice. With an international curatorial practice spanning the United States, Europe, and Latin America, he is committed to expanding artistic narratives and bringing historically underrepresented voices into global cultural conversations. He is the author of The Black Market: A Guide to Art Collecting, The Brilliance of the Color Black Through the Eyes of Art Collectors, and Global Conversations: Romania (2026). A doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, his research focuses on the pioneering African American abstract painter Ed Clark. His writing has appeared in leading art publications, including The Art Newspaper, Artnet, Artsy, Juxtapoz, CULTURED, and The Brooklyn Rail. Moore has curated exhibitions and developed artistic collaborations internationally, including projects connecting American and Romanian contemporary art. In 2026, he served as guest curator of The American Dream, the special double issue (#78–79) of Romania’s ARTA magazine, dedicated to American visual culture, artistic identity, and cross-cultural dialogue. Through his scholarship, publications, and curatorial practice, Moore advocates for a more inclusive and globally interconnected understanding of art history and contemporary artistic expression.
