Irina Botea Bucan (Ploiesti, 1970) has been engaged in an art practice that uses multiple media— digital video, film, video installation, performance, photography— to inspect the present socio-political dynamics and the possibility of their transformation. Her work combines reenactment strategies with auditions and elements of direct cinema and cinema vérité to look into the role of trauma, history, language, and music play in the formation of the individual and the community.
Irina graduated from the School of Art Institute of Chicago, where she took and MFA in 2006, and the National University of Arts in Bucharest, where she took a BFA in 2001 and a MFA in 2002. She is now writing her PhD at Goldsmith and lives between Bucharest, Birmingham and London. Her work has been exhibited at the New Museum, New York; MUSAC – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilia y León, Spain; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery Jeu de Paume, Paris; Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland; Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid; U-Turn Quadriennal, Copenhagen; Kunstforum, Vienna; Foksal Gallery, Warsaw; Argos Center for Art and Media, Brussels; MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Szczecin; Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; the Venice Biennale; the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; and the Prague Biennale. She has also participated in several film festivals such as the Artefact Festival, Leuven; the International Film Festival in Rotterdam; Impakt Panorama, Utrecht; and the Polis Adriatic European Festival. She has won the Impakt Film Festival Silver Award and the 3Arts Award.