Romanian Voices at the V&A: Exploring ‘Fluid Futures’ in Global Eastern Europe

🌐 A look back at a vibrant day of ideas, dialogue and cross-cultural exchange at the Victoria and Albert Museum this weekend, where the Romanian Cultural Institute in London was delighted to be a partner for a wide-ranging Symposium entitled “Fluid Futures: Recalibrating Land and History in Global Eastern Europe”. Romania was represented by curator and art critic Raluca Voinea, co-director of Tranzit Romania, and by Ileana Selejan, lecturer in Art History, Culture and Society at The University of Edinburgh.

🌳 The first panel opened with Raluca Voinea’s presentation on The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life, a project initiated in 2021 and developed collectively by tranzit.ro with artists, curators, theorists, economists and cultural workers. 🔄 She emphasised the project’s deeply interdisciplinary nature - from environmental learning and seed cultivation to workshops, residencies, performances and collective study sessions - and reflected on the project’s grounding in the relationship with the soil (pământ), both as material reality and as cultural, historical and emotional terrain.

🎞️ In her presentation “Chance Encounters and Generative Affinities: Eastern European Photographers in Latin America,” Ileana Selejan examined the work of artists shaped by a peripheral or semi-peripheral position within Western-centred discourses. 🎯 She traced how prolonged political instability and authoritarian regimes across the region impacted artistic production, generating a persistent concern with memory, state violence and displacement. Her talk illuminated the emergence of experimental photographic practices developed outside official institutions - practices driven by resilience, improvisation and transnational exchange.

References to 🇷🇴 also featured in the keynote lecture by Maja and Reuben Fowkes (University College London), who discussed Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan’s project ‘The Missing Mountain’, a research project that examines the extractive zones of Socialist Romania through the lens of uranium mining.

The symposium was curated by Dr. Catherine Troiano, Curator of Photography at the V&A, and organised with the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute, the Hungarian Cultural Centre, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Poland) and the Czech Cultural Centre.

A warm thank you to Catherine Troiano for the fantastic collaboration, to Raluca Voinea and Ileana Selejan for their generous and thought-provoking contributions, and to all speakers and participants for an inspiring day of shared inquiry into the futures and histories of global Eastern Europe.