80s Works by artist Marilena Preda Sânc, at Gaep
Works from the 1980s by artist Marilena Preda Sânc, some of which have never been exhibited publicly before, are on display at the Gaep gallery starting September 19.
“Bodyscape 1982–1988″ includes many collages, drawings, and photographs with interventions that highlight an experimental and courageous artistic practice that openly expresses Marilena Preda Sânc’s experiences as a woman, despite the oppressive climate of the time.
This is her third solo exhibition at Gaep.
Marilena Preda Sânc’s exhibition at Gaep offers an enlightening perspective on a decisive decade of introspection and artistic resistance. (…) The works on display reveal the relationship between the corporeal and spatial dimensions of her practice and anticipate ecofeminist concerns that resonate with today’s global discourse. Through the prism of her interest in feminism, nature, and power structures, Marilena Preda Sânc’s works from the 1980s appear both as historical documents and as ongoing meditations on the human condition—extremely relevant in the times we live in,” explains Anna Daneri, curator.
The artist adds: “Communist ideology could not exercise its coercive system in the intimacy of the artistic process. There was a dual state—inner freedom on the one hand, and a restrictive socio-political context on the other—which provoked introspection, keen observation, refuge in nature, nature as subject, and the self as subject in the artist. The body, in turn, became a medium.”
The exhibition is open until October 25.
About the artist and curator
Marilena Preda Sânc (born in 1955, lives and works in Bucharest) is an interdisciplinary artist, professor at the National University of Arts in Bucharest, and author of several texts on art in public spaces, feminism, and eco-art. Since the 1980s, her works in various media—painting, drawing, collage, video, performance—have been presented internationally in museums, galleries, biennials, and art fairs.
Her works can be found in public collections such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, the Albertina in Vienna, the Arhitekturni Muzej Ljubljana, and the Kunsthalle Nurenberg. In 2004, she was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit. In 2017, she received the Sardi per l’arte Back to the Future Special Mention at Artissima, Turin (with Gaep), and in 2020, the Radio România Cultural Award, Visual Arts category, for her solo exhibition “Subjective (De)Constructions” (at Gaep, 2019).
Marilena Preda Sânc’s first solo exhibition at Gaep was “but IT Got Too COLD” (2015).
Anna Daneri is an independent curator. Recent exhibitions she has curated include Nothing Is Lost. Art and Matter in Transformation (GAMeC, Bergamo, 2021-2022, with Lorenzo Giusti) and Claire Fontaine. Your Money and Your Life (Palazzo Ducale, Genoa/Galerias Municipais, Lisbon, 2019-2020).
She was one of the founders of the Peep-Hole art center in Milan (2009-2016), and since 2013 she has been responsible for the Meru Art*Science Research Program. Daneri was production manager for “Joan Jonas: They Come to Us without a Word” (2015) in the United States Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale and has worked on several transdisciplinary research projects, such as “Io sono confine/I Am Border” (Genoa, 2023) and “TEU” (Twenty–foot Equivalent Unit), initiated by On Public and Disfor University of Genova (Genoa, 2017). She is part of the artistic research collective Corpi Idrici and the committee Archivio Atelier Pharaildis Van den Broeck. Since 2020, he has been the co-artistic director of the Electropark festival.
Photo: silkscreen print “Bodyscape,” part of “Sketch of the Mind” (1986–1987)
