Ioana Palamar (b. 1989, Rădăuți, Suceava, Romania) is a visual artist and lecturer at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts in Iași, within the Painting Department. She holds a bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degree from the same institution, and beyond her academic role, she is an active presence on both the national and international art scene.

Violet Deppness (2017)

Another way of self-defence

Her style is defined by chromatic austerity and the fragmentary representation of the face and body, transformed into metaphors of memory and identity. Rooted in childhood and adolescent memories, her works convey both fragility and resilience. Critics have highlighted the apparent stillness, the suspension of time, and the tension between the ephemeral and the eternal that emerge from her practice.

For Ioana, the creative act is more than visual expression: it is a way of being, a form of existence and breathing. “Even a landscape can be an ‘selfportrait,’ because it reflects my way of being, of conceiving art, of existing through it and therefore of breathing,” the artist affirms. This statement reveals the profoundly subjective dimension of her work, where self-portraiture transcends the literal face and becomes any visual form that reflects the inner self.

Sparkle (2023)

“The concept of my work intertwines itself within glances, within silences, within faces that quietly retreat into the shadows of the unconscious—where they ascend, piercing the cryptic heavens of a self not yet revealed. My hand wanders in search of the traces of two bodies, discreetly emerging beneath the shadow of an eye encircled by an infinity of other eyes, hidden in the soul’s skin of bygone times. 

I open one door, then another, and another still—onward, into infinity—in an endless search for selves... A (non-)face gazes back, contemplative, beyond the window of a seasonless sky, merging with the humble rise of a blade of grass, or with some extension of the nostalgia that has haunted me for years. And now my layered melancholy yellows, ripens, and suddenly falls, like an overripe fruit, stripping my eye bare and leaving it Naked in the darkness of Light.”

In essence, Ioana Palamar is an artist of introspection and memory, who transforms pictorial fragments and silence into spaces of reflection and reconnection with the self, inviting viewers into an experience of self-discovery.

This article presents a selection from her artistic universe, spanning paintings, ceramic works, and acrylic pieces.

Discover more of her works and artistic journey by visiting her website and personal pages, where she regularly shares new artworks, articles, and accounts of her artist residencies.

Photo credits - Ioana Palamar

"I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best."

The Brașov Art Museum is currently hosting Where the Sky Burns, a solo exhibition by visual artist Diana Serghiuță, under the curatorial vision of Mihai Zgondoiu.

The Artist & her Art

Featuring Diana Serghiuță’s latest body of work, the exhibition marks a meaningful return to her native Brașov (Romania). For the first time, the local audience is invited to experience her art in a dedicated solo presentation. Currently living and working in Arad, the artist brings with her a rich, symbolic visual language shaped by personal mythology and introspective exploration.

Running through August 18, 2025, the exhibition leads viewers into an evocative world where timeless symbols—such as the serpent, fire, and the tear—are reimagined through a distinctly contemporary artistic vocabulary. "The artist transforms these archaic symbols into a personal alphabet, rich in ambiguity and meaning. Each work becomes both a philosophical inquiry and a meditative space, where the act of looking turns into a rite of passage," explains Alexandra Ilnițchi-Ardelean, responsible for Communication and PR at the Brașov Art Museum.

"Beyond the dense, gestural painting and the ethereal, almost sacred sensuality of her drawing, the exhibition invokes cultural memory, recovering forgotten meanings in a world increasingly consumed by material reality," she adds.

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Born in 1985 in Brașov, Diana Serghiuță is a visual artist whose work delves into the intricate and vulnerable dimensions of the human psyche. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design in Timișoara, with a focus on Painting, she completed her Master’s studies in 2010, followed by a PhD in Visual Arts at UVT in 2016.

Her artistic approach gives shape to emotional and psychological states that reside at the threshold between reality and imagination. Serghiuță’s compositions open up intimate, symbolic spaces—laden with personal references and veiled narratives—where memory and identity intersect. Her visual language is infused with a contemporary, feminine sensibility, reinterpreting fragments of her own life into poetic, often enigmatic forms. She currently lives and works in Arad, Romania.

Mihai Zgondoiu (born 1982, Mediaș) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, independent curator, and gallerist, with a PhD in Visual Arts from the National University of Arts in Bucharest (UNArte). He currently teaches as a Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Design, West University of Timișoara (UVT).

Zgondoiu is the founder of Atelier 030202, a contemporary art space in Bucharest dedicated to experimental practices, and co-founder of the visual culture magazine PROPAGARTA. Actively engaged in both the academic and independent art scenes, he lives and works between Bucharest and Timișoara.

Photos by Brașov Art Museum 

Contemporary artist Mirela Iordache, known for her artistic and interdisciplinary experiments, is now presenting a new solo exhibition. 

The exhibition “Gesture Fluidity” is on display at Art Yourself Gallery in Bucharest and “represents the rhythm, force and spontaneity of the artistic gesture, captures the moment when thought seems to dissolve, and the hands instinctively follow their own path. The works on display are visual echoes of an organic process, in which matter and movement merge into a single matter. The techniques used emphasize the force and dynamics of materials, the interaction of pigments and other materials, with the surface of the canvas highlighting the physical imprint of the gesture from beginning to end” – the artist explains.

“The exhibition investigates the relationship between gesture and work surface in the artistic process.

The pictorial gesture is not only a technical act, but also a projection of an inner state, a dialogue between intention and accident, between order and chaos, between visible and invisible, as the gesture unfolds, the surface of the work becomes a territory of gestural memory, preserving the traces of each impulse, each rhythm of the hand that creates them. 

The viewer is invited to follow this visual flow, to discover the matter and expression of the gesture that seems to flow through the impression of movement it suggests.”

Exhibitions and recognition

Throughout her career spanning almost two decades, Mirela Iordache has participated in over 90 solo, group and collective exhibitions in Romania, France, Germany, Belgium, Japan and the Republic of Moldova. Her works have been selected for prestigious international competitions, such as the Strabag Artaward International Competition and the Triennale Européenne de l’Estampe Contemporaine. 

Her recent projects include “Experiment Inside”, an exhibition presented at the Casa cu Lei in Bistrița-Năsăud, “Aterniger” at the National Art Museum of Moldova in Chișinău, “Aterniger 2” at the Bistrița-Năsăud Museum Complex, “Suspension” (Evangelical Church in Herina) and “Fragmentum Caeli” (Bistrița), which highlight the artist’s interest for the interaction between art, public space and architectural space.