Nona Inescu completed her studies in the summer of 2016 at the National University of Arts in Bucharest (Photography and Video Department) after studying at the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London (2009-2010) and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (2010-2011). Her artistic practice is interdisciplinary and includes photography, installation, sculptures and video works. Based on a theoretical and literary perspective, the works focus on the relationship between the human body and the environment and the redefinition of this subject in a post-human key. The mediating properties of the body are rendered in several ways, projecting a translation of the world driven by affect, signaling its position as an interface between self and reality. Concepts of geological time and our intense interrelation with our surroundings compose an aesthetic of a primal contemporary togetherness in an organic and biological techno-sphere.
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Education
- 2016
- National University of Arts, Bucharest, Photography and Video Department
- 2012
- Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Fashion Design Department
- 2013
- Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London
Solo Exhibitions
- 2025
- Reliquiae, Galleria Doris Ghetta, Milano
- 2024
- Ecuator Nocturn, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, Bucharest, RO
Preservers (Case for the Earth), Orto Botanico di Palermo, Palermo, IT
Daisyworld, Brooke Bennington, London, UK
- 2023
- Grey Gardens, Centre d’Arts Plastiques, Saint-Fons, FR
Offerings, KVOST, Schaufenster, Berlin, DE
- 2022
- Relics. Quarries. Reliquaries, Peles Empire, Berlin, DE
- 2021
- Waterlily Jaguar, SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
Venus Trap, Fiac!, solo presentation with SpazioA, Paris, FR
- 2019
- Corporealle, Künstlerhaus Bremen, curated by Nadja Quante, Bremen, DE
Verterberries, solo presentation with Sabot Gallery at Liste, Basel, CH
Acumen, Porcino, curated by Jesi Khadivi, Berlin, DE
- 2018
- An animal that was once thought to be a plant that transformed into stone,
SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
- 2017
- Lithosomes, Exile, Berlin, DE
- 2016
- Conversation with a stone, SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
Her latent image, Kube, Bucharest, RO
- 2015
- Hands don’t make magic, Sabot Gallery, Cluj, RO
Selected Group Exhibitions
- 2025
- Why We Should All Be Feminists , curated by Sabine Fellner & Alex Radu, /SAC, Bucharest, RO
Afterlife , curated by Amalia Vekri, Haus N Athen, Athens, GR
Have No Doubt of the Omnipotence of a Free People , curated by Raphael Guilbert, Bucharest, RO
Momies , Musée de l’Homme, Paris, FR
And the Ground Begins to Breathe , curated by Giacomo Pigliapoco, Galleria FuoriCampo, Siena, IT
Constellations Warsaw , Gunia Nowik Gallery x Catinca Tabacaru, Wrsaw, PL
Touch Nature , curated by Sabine Fellner, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, AT
Imagine Climate Dignity , curated by Barbara Holler and Simon Mraz, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, AT
- 2024
- Earthcake, curated by Living Content (Adriana Blidaru), Salina Targu Ocna, RO
Touch Nature, curated by Anca Rujoiu, Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest, RO
In The Mood for Interruption, curated by Tevz Logar, Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, AT
- 2023
- Matrix Bodies, curated by Frederike Sperling, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna, AT
rooted, AKINCI Gallery, Amsterdam, NE
Wannseewandeln, Wannsee Contemporary, Berlin, DE
I constantly wonder what time it is where you are, curated by Hana Ostan Ožbolt, Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest, RO
DER BIO-ADAPTER, Contemporary Fine Arts (CFA), Berlin, DE
Gems for the Garden, curated by Adriana Blidariu, Botanical Garden of Bucharest, RO
State of Emergence, curated by Lesia Kulchynska & Catinca Tabacaru, NADA East Broadway, NY, USA
Mental Pictures, Import/Export, Warsaw, PL
- 2022
- Plant Kingdom, Budapest Galeria, Budapest, HU
Aliens are temporary, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, DE
Devenir Fleurs, curated by Helene Guenin & Rebecca Francois, MAMAC, Nice, FR
Entangled Life: The Forest as Neural Network, curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, RADIUS, Delft, NE
- 2021
- You sit in a garden, curated by Chris Andrews, Centre Clark, Montreal, CA
Ducato Prize, Volumnia Space, Piacenza, IT
Electric Crossroads, curated by Radu Oreian, Bubble and Squeak, Brussels, BE
Harvest Home, curated by Veronika Cechova, AVU Pop Up Gallery, Prague, CZ
Under Pressure, curated by Living Content, Mobius Gallery, Bucharest, RO
How to be together, Art Encounters Biennale, curated by Kasia Redzis and Mihnea Mircan, Timișoara, RO Musikprotokoll, Steirischer Herbst, Graz, AT
The Venus Trap, solo presentation with SpazioA gallery at FIAC, Paris, FR
- 2020
- Flow, curated by SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
touch, Peles Empire, Berlin, DE
Olev Subbi: Landscape from the End of Times, curated by Àngels Miralda, Tallinn Art Hall, EE Walking In Ice, curated by Justin Polera & Jesi Khadivi, XC Hua gallery, Berlin, DE Pulse /ˈsɪstəm/, initiated by Leo Fourdrinier, Galerie L’Axolotl, Toulon, FR
- 2019
- The Long Term You Cannot Afford. On the Distribution of the Toxic, curated byAntonia Alampi, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, DE
Taking Root, curated by Jurriaan Benschop, Kunst Im Tunnel (KIT), Dusseldorf, DE The invisible inhale of an oceanic carbon breath, curated by Cristina Ramos, Etopia Centro de Arte y Tecnología, Zaragoza, SP
Rethinking the Image of the World – Projects and Sketches, curated by Cristian Nae & Adrian Bojenoiu, Le Mill, La Louviere, BE
Mutagenèse, curated by Nicolas de Ribou & Joris Thomas, Maison R&C,Marseille, FR
Interconnection: On Bodies of Water, curated by Veronika Čechová & Tereza Jindrová, Swimming Pool Projects, Sofia, BG
Imbroglio (or the ability to incorporate possibilities), curated by Like a Little Disaster, Polignano a Mare, IT
Tales of the haunted and the body, Casa Cristea Schneider, curated by Saskia Höfler-Hohengarten, Berlin, DE
What remains is what the poets found, PS120, curated by Jesi Khadivi & Justin Polera, Berlin, DE
- 2018
- Manufacturing Nature / Naturalizing The Synthetic, curated by Diana Marincu, Frac des Pays de la Loire, FR
Sometimes I can see it all perfectly, curated by Alisha Danscher, Soy Capitan, Berlin, DE
Flood-Tide, Love Unlimited, Glasgow, UK
10 Years of Love, SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
Blood, Stop, Space, Gold, curated by Diana Marincu, JosedelaFuente Gallery, Santander, ES
The Inhabitant, curated by Christina Gigliotti, Polansky Gallery, Prague, CZ
- 2017
- Life A User’s Manual, Art Encounters, curated by Ami Barak and Diana Marincu, Timișoara, RO
Becoming an Apricot.., Survival Kit 9, curated by Inga Lace, Jonatan Habib Enqvist, Solvita Kresse, Riga, LT
Notes on a shell, curated by Tiago Abreu Pinto & Sergio Verastegui, Marseille, FR Monsone, curated by Domenico de Chirico, Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, RO
Grotto Capitale, Exile, Berlin, DE
Notes on the Afterlife, curated by Rokolectiv Festival, Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest, RO
Aerial Roots, Trapez, curated by Nikolett Eross, Budapest, HU
- 2016
- Gestures of Tomorrow, Kunstverein Nuernberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft, curated by Judith Grobe, Nuernberg, DE
Camera Plus. Biennial of Contemporary Photography and Moving Image I, Iasi, RO
The Disappearance of Technology, ODD, curated by Mircea Nicolae, Bucharest, RO Künstlich! Natürlich!, Sabot, Cluj-Napoca, RO
- 2015
- Objects of Desire, Sabot Gallery, Cluj-Napoca, RO
14 × 14 – Survey of the Danube Region, MNAC Anexa, Bucharest, RO
Residencies
- 2023
- Ad occhi chiusi… Fondazione Merz & ZACentrale, Palermo, IT
- 2022
- Cite internationale des arts, Paris, FR
- 2018
- XXXII Ateliers Internationaux at Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, FR
Awards
- 2022
- Premio Ad occhi chiusi… Fondazione Merz & Artissima
- 2021
- Ducato Prize for Contemporary Art
Tortoise shell, burned pine cones, branch and log, plexiglass and steel
170 × 50 × 150 cm
Hahnemuhle print, metal frame
60 × 40 cm
Hahnemuhle print, metal frame
100 × 70 cm
Installation with 10 cast brass sculptures, variable sizes
Common Daisy (Bellis perennis) draws inspiration from the mathematical model developed by James Lovelock and Andrew Watson in 1984, which simulates a hypothetical world orbiting a star with fluctuating radiant energy. The model, designed to support the Gaia hypothesis, features black and white daisies that regulate the planet’s temperature through their respective abilities to absorb and reflect light. Inescu reimagines this concept to examine the hybrid relationships between humans, nature, and non-human species.
Steel, dried flowers (Strelitzia Nicolai, Protea, Heliconia, Kurrajong seed pods, coco boat leaf)
173 × 55 × 35 cm
‘Preservers (Case for nurturing interpersonal relationships)’ is a sculptural work, belonging to a new series of steel sculptures shaped like ancient sarcophagi, serving as contemporary containers for dry tropical plant specimens. This specific version of the work is based on a drawing from 1974 by the late Austrian artist Birgit Jürgenssen. Inescu brings to life the sketch from Jürgenssen by keeping only the structural part of the anthropomorphic greenhouse depicted in the drawing.
Performance documentation, RAD Art Fair
In Grey Gardens, Nona Inescu invests the exhibition space with a set of new works that are the result of a month-long production residency at the art center. Grey Gardens is an environment in a post-human world where species, architecture and materials are interconnected. The hybridizing relationships that humans have with nature and non-human species are recurring themes in her practice. These relations materialize in her installations through the contradictory use of materials such as glass and steel. The exhibition invites us into a space inhabited by cold metal, where a few wilted flowers have appeared and the human presence is barely suggested. The encounter with the works is delicate. The forms and images of Nona Inescu seduce and reveal new ecosystems where the limits between the human, the vegetal and the concrete combine to highlight their relations and their collaborations. It is by imagining these new interactions that Nona Inescu’s works produces an attempt to define a landscape of the future.
Concretion stones,
like natural reliquaries,
containers for past organic matter,
extracted from man-made sand quarries
or dropping down in a
water-carved valley,
anatomically-shaped imaginaries
a pareidolia exercise.
Nona Inescu completed her studies in the summer of 2016 at the National University of Arts in Bucharest (Photography and Video Department) after studying at the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London (2009-2010) and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (2010-2011). Her artistic practice is interdisciplinary and includes photography, installation, sculptures and video works. Based on a theoretical and literary perspective, the works focus on the relationship between the human body and the environment and the redefinition of this subject in a post-human key. The mediating properties of the body are rendered in several ways, projecting a translation of the world driven by affect, signaling its position as an interface between self and reality. Concepts of geological time and our intense interrelation with our surroundings compose an aesthetic of a primal contemporary togetherness in an organic and biological techno-sphere.
Education
- 2016
- National University of Arts, Bucharest, Photography and Video Department
- 2012
- Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Fashion Design Department
- 2013
- Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London
Solo Exhibitions
- 2025
- Reliquiae, Galleria Doris Ghetta, Milano
- 2024
- Ecuator Nocturn, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, Bucharest, RO
Preservers (Case for the Earth), Orto Botanico di Palermo, Palermo, IT
Daisyworld, Brooke Bennington, London, UK
- 2023
- Grey Gardens, Centre d’Arts Plastiques, Saint-Fons, FR
Offerings, KVOST, Schaufenster, Berlin, DE
- 2022
- Relics. Quarries. Reliquaries, Peles Empire, Berlin, DE
- 2021
- Waterlily Jaguar, SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
Venus Trap, Fiac!, solo presentation with SpazioA, Paris, FR
- 2019
- Corporealle, Künstlerhaus Bremen, curated by Nadja Quante, Bremen, DE
Verterberries, solo presentation with Sabot Gallery at Liste, Basel, CH
Acumen, Porcino, curated by Jesi Khadivi, Berlin, DE
- 2018
- An animal that was once thought to be a plant that transformed into stone,
SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
- 2017
- Lithosomes, Exile, Berlin, DE
- 2016
- Conversation with a stone, SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
Her latent image, Kube, Bucharest, RO
- 2015
- Hands don’t make magic, Sabot Gallery, Cluj, RO
Selected Group Exhibitions
- 2025
- Why We Should All Be Feminists , curated by Sabine Fellner & Alex Radu, /SAC, Bucharest, RO
Afterlife , curated by Amalia Vekri, Haus N Athen, Athens, GR
Have No Doubt of the Omnipotence of a Free People , curated by Raphael Guilbert, Bucharest, RO
Momies , Musée de l’Homme, Paris, FR
And the Ground Begins to Breathe , curated by Giacomo Pigliapoco, Galleria FuoriCampo, Siena, IT
Constellations Warsaw , Gunia Nowik Gallery x Catinca Tabacaru, Wrsaw, PL
Touch Nature , curated by Sabine Fellner, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, AT
Imagine Climate Dignity , curated by Barbara Holler and Simon Mraz, Künstlerhaus, Vienna, AT
- 2024
- Earthcake, curated by Living Content (Adriana Blidaru), Salina Targu Ocna, RO
Touch Nature, curated by Anca Rujoiu, Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest, RO
In The Mood for Interruption, curated by Tevz Logar, Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, AT
- 2023
- Matrix Bodies, curated by Frederike Sperling, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna, AT
rooted, AKINCI Gallery, Amsterdam, NE
Wannseewandeln, Wannsee Contemporary, Berlin, DE
I constantly wonder what time it is where you are, curated by Hana Ostan Ožbolt, Sector 1 Gallery, Bucharest, RO
DER BIO-ADAPTER, Contemporary Fine Arts (CFA), Berlin, DE
Gems for the Garden, curated by Adriana Blidariu, Botanical Garden of Bucharest, RO
State of Emergence, curated by Lesia Kulchynska & Catinca Tabacaru, NADA East Broadway, NY, USA
Mental Pictures, Import/Export, Warsaw, PL
- 2022
- Plant Kingdom, Budapest Galeria, Budapest, HU
Aliens are temporary, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, DE
Devenir Fleurs, curated by Helene Guenin & Rebecca Francois, MAMAC, Nice, FR
Entangled Life: The Forest as Neural Network, curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, RADIUS, Delft, NE
- 2021
- You sit in a garden, curated by Chris Andrews, Centre Clark, Montreal, CA
Ducato Prize, Volumnia Space, Piacenza, IT
Electric Crossroads, curated by Radu Oreian, Bubble and Squeak, Brussels, BE
Harvest Home, curated by Veronika Cechova, AVU Pop Up Gallery, Prague, CZ
Under Pressure, curated by Living Content, Mobius Gallery, Bucharest, RO
How to be together, Art Encounters Biennale, curated by Kasia Redzis and Mihnea Mircan, Timișoara, RO Musikprotokoll, Steirischer Herbst, Graz, AT
The Venus Trap, solo presentation with SpazioA gallery at FIAC, Paris, FR
- 2020
- Flow, curated by SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
touch, Peles Empire, Berlin, DE
Olev Subbi: Landscape from the End of Times, curated by Àngels Miralda, Tallinn Art Hall, EE Walking In Ice, curated by Justin Polera & Jesi Khadivi, XC Hua gallery, Berlin, DE Pulse /ˈsɪstəm/, initiated by Leo Fourdrinier, Galerie L’Axolotl, Toulon, FR
- 2019
- The Long Term You Cannot Afford. On the Distribution of the Toxic, curated byAntonia Alampi, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, DE
Taking Root, curated by Jurriaan Benschop, Kunst Im Tunnel (KIT), Dusseldorf, DE The invisible inhale of an oceanic carbon breath, curated by Cristina Ramos, Etopia Centro de Arte y Tecnología, Zaragoza, SP
Rethinking the Image of the World – Projects and Sketches, curated by Cristian Nae & Adrian Bojenoiu, Le Mill, La Louviere, BE
Mutagenèse, curated by Nicolas de Ribou & Joris Thomas, Maison R&C,Marseille, FR
Interconnection: On Bodies of Water, curated by Veronika Čechová & Tereza Jindrová, Swimming Pool Projects, Sofia, BG
Imbroglio (or the ability to incorporate possibilities), curated by Like a Little Disaster, Polignano a Mare, IT
Tales of the haunted and the body, Casa Cristea Schneider, curated by Saskia Höfler-Hohengarten, Berlin, DE
What remains is what the poets found, PS120, curated by Jesi Khadivi & Justin Polera, Berlin, DE
- 2018
- Manufacturing Nature / Naturalizing The Synthetic, curated by Diana Marincu, Frac des Pays de la Loire, FR
Sometimes I can see it all perfectly, curated by Alisha Danscher, Soy Capitan, Berlin, DE
Flood-Tide, Love Unlimited, Glasgow, UK
10 Years of Love, SpazioA, Pistoia, IT
Blood, Stop, Space, Gold, curated by Diana Marincu, JosedelaFuente Gallery, Santander, ES
The Inhabitant, curated by Christina Gigliotti, Polansky Gallery, Prague, CZ
- 2017
- Life A User’s Manual, Art Encounters, curated by Ami Barak and Diana Marincu, Timișoara, RO
Becoming an Apricot.., Survival Kit 9, curated by Inga Lace, Jonatan Habib Enqvist, Solvita Kresse, Riga, LT
Notes on a shell, curated by Tiago Abreu Pinto & Sergio Verastegui, Marseille, FR Monsone, curated by Domenico de Chirico, Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, RO
Grotto Capitale, Exile, Berlin, DE
Notes on the Afterlife, curated by Rokolectiv Festival, Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest, RO
Aerial Roots, Trapez, curated by Nikolett Eross, Budapest, HU
- 2016
- Gestures of Tomorrow, Kunstverein Nuernberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft, curated by Judith Grobe, Nuernberg, DE
Camera Plus. Biennial of Contemporary Photography and Moving Image I, Iasi, RO
The Disappearance of Technology, ODD, curated by Mircea Nicolae, Bucharest, RO Künstlich! Natürlich!, Sabot, Cluj-Napoca, RO
- 2015
- Objects of Desire, Sabot Gallery, Cluj-Napoca, RO
14 × 14 – Survey of the Danube Region, MNAC Anexa, Bucharest, RO
Residencies
- 2023
- Ad occhi chiusi… Fondazione Merz & ZACentrale, Palermo, IT
- 2022
- Cite internationale des arts, Paris, FR
- 2018
- XXXII Ateliers Internationaux at Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, FR
Awards
- 2022
- Premio Ad occhi chiusi… Fondazione Merz & Artissima
- 2021
- Ducato Prize for Contemporary Art