Romanian Artist Larisa Sitar’s Debut in New York
- RCI USA
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
A solo presentation at Independent Art Fair 2026 presented by Suprainfinit Gallery
About The Event
Larisa Sitar makes her New York debut at Independent Art Fair 2026 with a solo presentation by Suprainfinit Gallery. The exhibition introduces her practice to an international audience, foregrounding a distinctive approach to materiality, historical inquiry, and socio-political reflection.
Sitar’s work examines the evolution of social and cultural values in relation to political movements, shifting socio-economic contexts, technological change, and the human relationship with the natural world. Operating at the intersection of digital and physical processes, her practice brings together computational methods and traditional, hand-crafted techniques.
A defining element of her work is the use of concrete—a material deeply rooted in the visual legacy of modernism, social realism, and brutalism. Through it, Sitar creates forms that oscillate between permanence and fragility, probing questions of power, memory, and transformation.
This project is an Independent Debut, the first solo presentation of the artist’s work in New York, supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, reaffirming a commitment to advancing contemporary Romanian art within an international context.
Location: Pier 36, 299 South Street, New York, 10002
Period: May 14–17, 2026
Suprainfinit Gallery and Larisa Sitar can be found at Booth 111.
Program:
Friday, May 15, 2026 | 11 AM – 7 PM
Saturday, May 16, 2026 | 11 AM – 7 PM
Sunday, May 17, 2026 | 11 AM – 6 PM
Please note: Tickets are required to attend this event. Details here.
About the Artworks
Larisa Sitar’s work playfully probes the social values embedded in architecture and design, treating ornament as a quietly subversive sociopolitical marker. In her ongoing series of concrete seated legs, the human body is reduced to its simplest mechanics of support, part sculpture, part structure, while alluding to the visual legacy of Social Modernism. At the same time, the works echo the stark charm of Brutalism and the familiar textures of the Eastern European landscape, balancing heaviness with a subtle sense of humor.
The figurative bas-reliefs in concrete tackle the myths of eternal youth and endless life that embody both a collective longing and an unattainable ideal. These narratives, passed down through generations, speak to a deep-seated desire to transcend time and limitation, even as they underscore the inevitability of change and decay. In this way, they echo the compromises that shape lived reality, between aspiration and constraint, permanence and loss, revealing how cultural imagination both resists and reflects the conditions of everyday life.
Sitar’s mirrored reliefs recall Brutalist façades, creating a tension that repositions ornamentation as a site of political and cultural meaning. Rather than reflecting an immediate image, these mirrored seascapes evoke memories, dreams, and imagined realities.
About the Artists
Larisa Sitar (b. 1984) is a Bucharest-based artist whose dynamic practice moves between photography, drawing, sculpture, and site-specific installations. Blending digital innovation with analogue craft, she creates visually striking works that explore how cultural values shift in response to politics, technology, and our changing relationship with nature. Rooted in materiality and cultural memory, her pieces transform familiar forms into powerful narratives.
A recipient of the KVOST Scholarship and Claus Michaletz Prize (Berlin, 2023), Sitar has exhibited internationally, with solo shows in Berlin, Bucharest, and Brussels, and presentations at major institutions and biennials including the Venice Biennale; Kunsthal Aarhus Kunsthal in Denmark, Kunsthalle Bega and Art Encounters in Timisoara. In 2019–2020, she was an artist-in-residence at Wiels Brussels, one of the most prestigious artist residencies in Europe.
