Romania at the Venice Biennale 2026 – ”Black Seas – Scores for the Sonic Eye”: From science to sculptural visual-sound installation

The project “Black Seas – Scores for the Sonic Eye” by artists Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán, representing Romania at this year’s Venice Art Biennale, includes – in the Romanian Pavilion in the Giardini – a sculptural video installation about the surface of the Black Sea and its unseen side, and two works at the New Gallery ICRCU (Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanist Research in Venice) exploring territories.

The curators are Corina Oprea and Diana Marincu.

Corina Oprea says that the project is “an extremely powerful and necessary proposal in the context of the Biennale. It connects to other oceanographic realities, beyond borders and concrete regional situations. Moreover, placing sound at the center of the artistic presentation is a first. (…) The Romanian Pavilion is in line with the central theme of the Biennale, “In Minor Keys””.

Diana Marincu explained at a conference where the project was presented, “Artists also look at the subjects, the voices that are beyond the human and how new trends in science are bringing oceanization to the center. Water becomes a binder through which we can understand existence in a much wider sphere. This need to know what lies in the layers of the Black Sea is translated in the exhibition. And sound is one of the main mediums of expression.”

Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán, who are already working on the implementation of the project, confessed that they have been reflecting on the project for a long time. “We argue that we can only talk about the Black Sea through its plurality. Starting from simple questions, we try to analyze this political, geographic space, a closed, very fragile ecosystem.”

The Romanian Pavilion will present a video-sound installation including two movies and several sculptures. The visitor enters an “almost underwater” space, according to the artists, who have also paid special attention to people with disabilities, adapting the exhibition to them.

For the sound part, Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán collaborated with Simina Oprescu (sound composition), Diana Miron (performer, vocal composition), Laurențiu Coțac and Attila Faravelli (field recording).

Allocated budget: 1.2 million lei

A country project, Romania’s participation in the Venice Biennale is financed by the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Romanian Cultural Institute. The total budget allocated this year is 1.2 million RON. It will, of course, be supplemented by sponsorships.

“We are in dialog to see how we manage to find solutions to increase the budget in order to be able to anticipate the project’s timetable. At the ICR, we have managed to increase the budget, this year it is 250,000 RON”, said Liviu Jicman, the president of the Institute, at the same conference.

Ioana Ciocan, the Romanian commissioner for the Venice Art Biennale, said: “No country in the world fully funds national participation in Venice. There are countries that give very little money and countries that make efforts, like Romania”.

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 holds 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 title “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.