Curated by Alejandro Tantanian, Andrés Gallina, and Florencia Qualina, the show is structured into eleven distinct “scenes,” each functioning as a temporal capsule that captures a defining moment in the evolution of Argentine experimental performance. The journey begins with the pioneering work of the Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual (CEA) at the Instituto Di Tella, where artists like Roberto Villanueva challenged aesthetic norms through radical multimedia experimentation. These early forays into cross-disciplinary performance set the stage for the subversive energy that would later emerge in venues like the Centro Parakultural, which became a haven for artistic freedom, irreverence, and experimentation.

Among the exhibition’s highlights are works by Griselda Gambaro, whose play El Campo confronts violence and repression with unflinching intensity, and Nacha Guevara, whose renditions of “Esto es teatro” encapsulate the generational spirit of defiance. The show also celebrates Batato Barea, whose performances fused clowning, travesty, and literary references into a singular theatrical language. Collectives such as La Organización Negra and the Parakultural ensemble are also honored, highlighting the collaborative ethos that defined much of Argentina’s experimental theater scene.

The exhibition’s design, conceived by Victoria Noorthoorn and Daniela Thomas, further enhances its impact. Through immersive installations, archival videos, original documents, and evocative objects, the curators craft an environment that invites active engagement. Visitors are not merely observers; they are participants in a narrative that intertwines art, politics, and society. The careful choreography of space and media allows for a multisensory experience that mirrors the dynamism and transgression of the performances themselves.

Ultimately, “Esto es Teatro” is more than an exhibition—it is a celebration of theatrical audacity. It reminds us that theater, at its most vital, is an act of resistance, a declaration of identity, and a testament to the creative freedom that emerges even under constraints. For anyone interested in the intersections of art, history, and social commentary, this exhibition offers a rare and compelling insight into the forces that shaped Argentina’s experimental theater.

"In this approach, she mobilizes an archive of graphic signs borrowed from the history of design. Although the elements of visual language are explicitly borrowed from the modernity of the historical avant-garde - collage, photographic montage with multiple perspectives, coding through constructivist geometric abstraction - the theme is obviously that of the transition from print to digital communication. In this transition, the notion of surface plays a crucial role. The surface, understood not only as a reflective medium, like a mirror, but also as an interface, a membrane that allows contact and interaction between two or more communication systems and users, is fundamental in the transition from postmodern simulation, defined as a shallow surface to the interface - hyper-modern technological leather.

Suggesting a shattered screen, her visual language reveals fragments of everyday life that fall hard into the category of advertising images. Behind the advertising image, always carefully constructed and technologically augmented, Monica Pop inserts amateur photographs, images of vernacular architecture, depopulated rural landscapes, fragments of subjectively viewed spaces, archaic places that, in another context, could become the subject of books postcards that popularize exoticism. Finally, the resulting images are in a broader trend of researching social and critical design that seems to become defining for the design department of the University of Arts in Iasi", pointed out Cristian Nae, in his curatorial speech.

About the artist 
Associate Professor in Design at FAVD, UNAGE Iaşi, PhD Coordinator at the UNAGE Doctoral School of Visual Arts, since 2016, Monica Pop graduated with a doctorate in aesthetics, as well as a master's program in which she studied aspects of anthropology cultural and social.

Her theoretical research focuses on interdisciplinary fields of design and visual arts, communication management in professional practice. Her predominant field of research is semiotics, in all its forms of manifestation, the dynamics of the sign in society, and the transposition of practitioners' concepts into new understandings of design. She has published eight scientific papers dealing with issues related to visual semiotics, visual language dynamics as well as issues of design representation in the environmental or advertising space. She participated in conferences indexed in international databases, with articles on design thinking, industrial design, ecodesign, etc.

She has also coordinated various art projects at UNAGE Iasi, has been a member of three research grants and is a member of F.D.I. Participates in national and international exhibitions: TEXPOART - International Triennial of Textile Arts, BIAMT - International Biennial of Miniature Arts Timisoara, WEST MEETS EAST - a cultural book exchange, CENTENNIAL National Salon of Contemporary Art and more. (https://doctart.ro/indrumatori-doctorate-arte-vizuale/monica-pop/)

Another project of the artist - INDEXART

Recently, in the first part of April, Monica Pop presented another exhibition project - INDEXART (April 11-17), at the PARTER gallery of FAVD, UNAGE Iași, an event that coincided with the Open Doors Week at UNAGE Iași.

The exhibition included ten works and a film (sound and image), the last made and edited by designer Tiberiu Pop. The selected art photographs proposed a series of "visual metaphors that start from the type of sign called the index and open a wide field of interpretations and contemplations," said the artist about the project.

Mirela Iordache in her studio

 
The artist's latest exhibition project, recently opened in the Art Yourself Gallery in

Bucharest until April 30, is Planetarium - an exhibition focused on abstractionism,

chromatic force and total lack of geometry and shape. The artist's compositions focus on gesture,

on the inner state, on the moment that generates them, on the „now”, on color, matter, all linked on the imaginary level by the artistic concept.

Mirela Iordache, "Blue fragments"

 
“The abstract is the absolute nonfigurative! A statement in the absence of the recognizable, in a denial of the eikon, a work that cannot be read in waiting horizons… Geometry and straight lines are absent. The form is born from gesture, the gesture from inner state, and the state and the moment give the uniqueness! Matter is born from sinuosities defying perpendicularity, a self-dictation faithfully following the state, expressed in plastic language. Gestures and form acquire kinetic features, they become geographies of the imaginary ”, explains the artist in the exhibition statement that accompanies the Planetarium project.

"Explosion"

 
"Each new canvas is a challenge, fragments or whole in search for a response. It is the revelation of a moment or the culmination of endless days and nights of unrest. The germination of the idea towards gesture, shape and color. It is the essence of the narrator encapsulated in a new plastic expression! ”, added Mirela.

The rest I think is beyond words, is art and it's purely visual. To understand better and more, we have look at her artworks, brought together under the title of this exhibition. Now I should list the most important painting exhibitions of artist Mirela Iordache in Romania, which are:

2021, PLANETARIUM // ArtYourself Galleries, Bucharest

2019, Anthropogen // Carol Galleries, Oradea

2018, Risipitori II // Prahova County Art Museum „Ion Ionescu - Quintusˮ, Ploiești

2018, Ne / ow Art // Cantacuzino Castle, Busteni

2017, Entropomorphs // Carol Galleries, Bucharest

2016, Mirela Iordache // Museum of Visual Art, Galați

2015, Squanderers // GO Art Projects Gallery, Bucharest

2013, Axis // ArtYourself Gallery, Bucharest

At the same time, the artist was present in a series of collective national and international exhibitions, such as:

2020, National Salon of Contemporary Art / Visual Arts Center, Bucharest

2020, Contemporania II [50 x 50] / Art Yourself Gallery, Bucharest

2018, National Salon of Contemporary Art / National Museum of Art of Romania (MnaR), Bucharest

2017, Chisinau International Painting Biennial / Iasi Art Museum, National Art Museum of Moldova Chisinau

2017, Retrospective of Romanian contemporary painting Paris - Bucharest / Espace culturel Christiane Peugeot, Paris

2016, Soleil de L’Est Retrospective in Bucharest / ARCUB, Sala Coloanelor, Bucharest

2016, Art Safari - Bucharest Art Pavilion / Dacia-Romania Palace, Bucharest

2015, Soleil de L’Est: 20 years of activity / Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR), Bucharest

2015, Chisinau International Painting Biennial / Brâncuși Hall, Parliament Palace, Bucharest

2014, UNArte at 150 years / Dalles Hall, Bucharest

2013, Presences of Romanian contemporary painting in France / Romanian Cultural Institute, Bucharest

2013, Triennale Européene de l’Estampe Contemporaine / Cultural Center, Rignac, France