art
“Nature after Nature” — Reimagining Our Relationship with Nature Through Art
October 16, 2025 | Cosmina Marcela OLTEAN ArtPage
In early October, in Timișoara opened a new international group exhibition of contemporary art entitled “Nature after Nature”, hosted at Comenduirea Garnizoanei. The project is curated by Ileana Pintilie, Raluca Oancea, and Cristian Nae.
The concept
The exhibition invites visitors to rethink the relationship with nature—not as a passive backdrop, but as an active partner in dialogue. Through a combination of bio-art, immersive installations, eco-activist interventions, and technologies such as virtual reality, the project mediates between living matter and contemporary tools.
"Nature after Nature" also revisits ecological genealogies in Romanian art, drawing connections between emblematic works of the past and contemporary artistic expressions. Central to the exhibition are themes of coexistence, environmental responsibility, and new ways of “inhabiting the earth.”
Public Programs and Events
On the opening day, October 1, a public debate on art, nature, and ecology took place, featuring curators and several artists and critics, including Raluca Oancea, Cristian Nae, Andrei Mateescu, Raluca Paraschiv, Mirela Stoeac-Vlăduți, and Diana Marincu. The discussion was moderated by Ileana Pintilie and Liliana Mercioiu-Popa.
Throughout the exhibition, guided tours were organized for the general public as well as special tours for families and children, including during the White Night of the Galleries. These tours offered insight into how the participating artists interpret nature, the processes behind their works, and the significance of each piece within the broader curatorial concept.
Perspectives
"Nature after Nature" acts as a platform for reflection on how contemporary art can respond to pressing global issues such as climate change, environmental degradation, and the role of technology in our relationship with the natural world. By creating a shared space for experimentation and dialogue, the exhibition positions nature not merely as an aesthetic theme, but as an active subject.
Moreover, the project encourages public engagement, fostering empathy, ecological awareness, and critical reflection on the environment we inhabit. In a city like Timișoara—with its vibrant cultural scene and engaged community—this exhibition has the potential to generate not only artistic but also social impact.
The Curators & their Statement
<<The artistic research project “Nature after Nature” explores the territory between art and ecology, approaching the latter not as a technocratic system or an extractive resource, but as a network of practices of care and coexistence between human and non-human agents. Plants, animals, clouds, and soil are therefore not regarded as mere decorative backdrops, but as ontological and political subjects—co-agents capable of relation, affect, and engagement in both artistic and philosophical processes. Space is fractured into “places of dwelling,” time becomes slow, repetitive, rhizomatic. The perspective is one of continuity and entanglement, which captures, in the spirit of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, both moments of hybridization—when human “flesh” flows into the “flesh” of the world—and moments of “reversibility,” when the landscape represented by the artist seems to gaze back.
Post-anthropocentric ethics intersects with an aesthetics that transcends mere representation, a perspective that may be read through the lens of “remediation” as defined by Bolter & Grusin: a remediation aimed not only at reinterpreting previous artistic forms, but at re-discovering nature itself, filtered through centuries of images, layers of scientific knowledge, and technological mediation. The traditional landscape, as the “old medium” of nature offered to vision, is thus deconstructed through “new media” that sustain contemporary artistic strategies and multisensory, participatory experiences.
“Nature after Nature” opens, in this context, a space of reciprocal listening, inviting us to rethink our relationship with the living world not as an inert backdrop, but as a partner in dialogue.
Photos by Cristian Nae
The concept
The exhibition invites visitors to rethink the relationship with nature—not as a passive backdrop, but as an active partner in dialogue. Through a combination of bio-art, immersive installations, eco-activist interventions, and technologies such as virtual reality, the project mediates between living matter and contemporary tools.
"Nature after Nature" also revisits ecological genealogies in Romanian art, drawing connections between emblematic works of the past and contemporary artistic expressions. Central to the exhibition are themes of coexistence, environmental responsibility, and new ways of “inhabiting the earth.”
Participating Artists
The exhibition brings together artists from different generations and contexts, including Geta Brătescu—a key figure linking art history and ecology—as well as contemporary artists such as Dan Acostioaei, Matei Bejenaru, Josépha Blanchet, Ole Blank, Irina Botea Bucan, Floriama Cândea, Zoița Delia Călinescu, Lorena Cocioni, Giulia Crețulescu, Suzana Dan, Andreea David, Dragoș Dogioiu, Tatiana Fiodorova-Lefter, Constantin Flondor, Lavinia German, Cosmin Haiaș, Michael Höpfner, Mălina Ionescu, Iosif Király, Aurora Király, Ana Kun, Kopacz Kund, Andrei Mateescu, Cătălin Marinescu, Radu Marțin, Andreea Medar, Liliana Mercioiu-Popa, Mircea Modreanu, Ana Maria Micu, Marina Oprea, Raluca Paraschiv, Tudor Pătrașcu, Dan Perjovschi, Dan Vișovan/Bogdan Rața, Claudia Retegan, Cătălin Rulea, Sergiu Sas, Ovidiu Toader, Miki Velciov, Mihai Zgondoiu, who explore ecological themes and nature in innovative ways.
Their works incorporate biological materials, living elements, ecological interventions, and installations that engage the senses, alongside technologies that allow visitors to experience nature in a sensitive and interactive manner.
Their works incorporate biological materials, living elements, ecological interventions, and installations that engage the senses, alongside technologies that allow visitors to experience nature in a sensitive and interactive manner.
Public Programs and Events
On the opening day, October 1, a public debate on art, nature, and ecology took place, featuring curators and several artists and critics, including Raluca Oancea, Cristian Nae, Andrei Mateescu, Raluca Paraschiv, Mirela Stoeac-Vlăduți, and Diana Marincu. The discussion was moderated by Ileana Pintilie and Liliana Mercioiu-Popa.
Throughout the exhibition, guided tours were organized for the general public as well as special tours for families and children, including during the White Night of the Galleries. These tours offered insight into how the participating artists interpret nature, the processes behind their works, and the significance of each piece within the broader curatorial concept.
Perspectives
"Nature after Nature" acts as a platform for reflection on how contemporary art can respond to pressing global issues such as climate change, environmental degradation, and the role of technology in our relationship with the natural world. By creating a shared space for experimentation and dialogue, the exhibition positions nature not merely as an aesthetic theme, but as an active subject.
Moreover, the project encourages public engagement, fostering empathy, ecological awareness, and critical reflection on the environment we inhabit. In a city like Timișoara—with its vibrant cultural scene and engaged community—this exhibition has the potential to generate not only artistic but also social impact.
The Curators & their Statement
Ileana Pintilie is an art historian, curator, and professor at the West University of Timișoara.
Raluca Oancea is a curator, professor at UNArte Bucharest, and project director for Nature after Nature.
Cristian Nae is an art critic, curator, and professor at 'George Enescu' National University of Arts in Iași.
Statement
Raluca Oancea is a curator, professor at UNArte Bucharest, and project director for Nature after Nature.
Cristian Nae is an art critic, curator, and professor at 'George Enescu' National University of Arts in Iași.
Statement
<<The artistic research project “Nature after Nature” explores the territory between art and ecology, approaching the latter not as a technocratic system or an extractive resource, but as a network of practices of care and coexistence between human and non-human agents. Plants, animals, clouds, and soil are therefore not regarded as mere decorative backdrops, but as ontological and political subjects—co-agents capable of relation, affect, and engagement in both artistic and philosophical processes. Space is fractured into “places of dwelling,” time becomes slow, repetitive, rhizomatic. The perspective is one of continuity and entanglement, which captures, in the spirit of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, both moments of hybridization—when human “flesh” flows into the “flesh” of the world—and moments of “reversibility,” when the landscape represented by the artist seems to gaze back.
Post-anthropocentric ethics intersects with an aesthetics that transcends mere representation, a perspective that may be read through the lens of “remediation” as defined by Bolter & Grusin: a remediation aimed not only at reinterpreting previous artistic forms, but at re-discovering nature itself, filtered through centuries of images, layers of scientific knowledge, and technological mediation. The traditional landscape, as the “old medium” of nature offered to vision, is thus deconstructed through “new media” that sustain contemporary artistic strategies and multisensory, participatory experiences.
“Nature after Nature” opens, in this context, a space of reciprocal listening, inviting us to rethink our relationship with the living world not as an inert backdrop, but as a partner in dialogue.
From an object of contemplation or an exploitable resource, nature becomes an active agent in the co-production of meaning: bio-art, immersive installations, and eco-activist interventions that integrate living matter and place it in relation to technological instruments and interfaces such as virtual reality. At the same time, the exhibition reconstructs ecological genealogies from Romanian art and brings them into contact with contemporary practices, proposing in Timișoara a way of inhabiting the earth grounded in care and coexistence. Conceived as a living organism, “Nature after Nature” thus brings together transgenerational perspectives that intersect, converse, collaborate, and differentiate themselves within constellations that do not aim to impose a single meaning upon nature, but rather to (re)teach us how to listen to it.>>
The project is organized in partnership with the SIMULTAN Festival, several art universities (UNArte, UAD, UVT), and various local and national cultural institutions.
The project is organized in partnership with the SIMULTAN Festival, several art universities (UNArte, UAD, UVT), and various local and national cultural institutions.
Photos by Cristian Nae
