Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán represent Romania at the Venice Art Biennale 2026
The artistic duo Anca Benera – Arnold Estefán represent Romania at the Venice Art Biennale 2026, after the national competition for projects was not contested. The curators are Corina Oprea and Diana Marincu.
On January 12 it was announced that after the second round of the competition, the project “Black Seas – Scores for the Sonic Eye” was the winner. The names of the creators were announced after the deadline for objections.
The project received 597 points in the second round, resulting in an average score of 85.28 p. Details to be announced.
About artists and curators
Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan have been collaborating as an artistic duo since 2012, living and working in Vienna and Bucharest. Their artistic practice is research-based, following the hidden or invisible patterns behind certain historical, social or geopolitical narratives. Their works are articulated in a variety of genres, formats and media, including installation, video, drawing or performance.
In 2022, they were awarded the Birgit Jürgenssen Prize by the Ministry of Arts and Culture (BMKOES) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Corina Oprea – curator, editor and researcher – specializes in contemporary art, visual and performance culture. Oprea is co-editor of the anthology Climate: Our Right to Breathe, published by K Verlag in 2023. He was the editor-in-chief of L’Internationale Online, the digital platform for research and the arts of a network of more than 15 European museums and arts organizations, and a lecturer at HDK-Valand, Gothenburg. Between 2017 and 2018, he was artistic director of Konsthall C in Stockholm, with a program dedicated to decolonization in the North. She has a PhD from Loughborough University, with the thesis “The End of the Curator – on curatorial acts as collective production of knowledge”, and was curator of the program Timisoara 2023 – European Capital of Culture and the inaugural exhibition “Chronic desire/ Thirst chronicle” and the closing program “Performance ZONA &”. Born in 1981 in Bucharest, she lives and works in Stockholm.
Diana Marincu – curator and art critic – is a member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and IKT (International Association of Contemporary Art Curators), artistic director of the Art Encounters Foundation in Timisoara since 2018.
The exhibitions he proposes start from an investigative method, and most of the time the questions they formulate resonate with the problems identified by artists in their practice, from the visual and narrative strategies of image construction, to the tension between subject and context, as well as the posthumanist turn in contemporary art.
Between 2012 and 2018, she collaborated with the Plan B Foundation in Cluj and The Paintbrush Factory.
In 2017, Diana Marincu curated together with Ami Barak the second edition of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara, under the name “Life – How to Use”.
During the Romania-France Season, Diana Marincu curated two exhibitions in France: “Persona”, at MUCEM – Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, Marseille (2019); “Manufacturing Nature / Naturalizing the Synthetic”, Frac des Pays de la Loire (2018).
She is the winner of the Bega Art Prize 2022.
The 61st edition of the International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia will take place from May 9 to November 22, with a preview for specialists and the press from May 6 to 8, 2026. The theme of the edition is “In Minor Keys“. At the 60th International Art Exhibition, Romania was represented by the project “Ce este munca/ What Work Is”, signed by Șerban Savu.
