This edition of Art Encounters Biennial departs from reflections on the city of Timișoara and its various biennial locations. In reflecting on these marks, on what these places are telling us today, and how we can occupy them in a context of an international art exhibition, we thought of the echo, as both a notion and an event.
The Garrison Command (former military building), Art Encounters Foundation (former factory premises and kindergarten) and FABER (former factory) each as such bear the marks of time and different context, serving as crucial witnesses to cultural, social, political, and even architectural evolutions.
3 exhibitions
+ 60 International artists
+ 30 countries
30.05.202513.07.2025
CURATORS Tevž Logar / Ana Janevski
Inside the walls of the Garrison, the works on display interact with the deep traces left by the various historical regimes of authority, war and control, transforming the building into a space of dialog, where the oppressions of the past are not only remembered but also reimagined. This idea is also reflected in the architecture of the exhibition designed for the Garrison, which enters into a dialog with the existing space, embracing its history while weaving new realities into the larger fabric of historical narratives. Echoes of unrest and protest reverberate through the artworks, linking memory to contemporary global movements of resistance and resilience. In dialog, these works amplify voices that continue to challenge the structures of colonialism, imperialism and systemic violence.
VISITING HOURS
Monday – Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday – Sunday: 12:00-20:00
Garrison Command Piața Libertății 5, Timișoara
ARTISTS
Bora Baboci, Christine Cizmas, Alicia Mihai Gazcue, Dana Kavelina, Oscar Murillo, Mila Panic, Ghenadie Popescu, Stefan Sava, Bojan Stojcic, Nora Turato, Anton Vidokle & Liam Gillick, Marina Abramovic, Ana Adam, Mona Benyamin, Pavel Braila, Geta Brătescu, Clement Cogitore, Cian Dayrit, Ladislava Gaziová, Karpo Godina, Petrit Halilaj, Veronika Hapchenko, Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski, Kipwani Kiwanga, Ana Kun, David Malkovic, Teresa Margolles, Silvia Moldovan, Andrei Nacu, Marina Naprushkina, Raluca Popa, Larisa Sitar, Mark Verlan, Rosario Zorraquin
30.05.202513.07.2025
CURATORS Tevž Logar / Ana Janevski
The FABER building is the result of a transformation and restoration of a
200-year- old industrial structure, the former Azur factory, a chemical manufacturer. Some of the artworks presented in these spaces reflect on the post-socialist condition, on political transitions and economic changes, tracing the shifting role of workers and their complex entanglement with culture, industry, and political systems. Other artworks deal with ways in which labor, migration, and identity are negotiated in contemporary realities, using examples of green colonialism. The feminist genealogies underpinning a range of works call forth the wisdom of generations past to illuminate pathways toward gender and social justice. The narratives echoing from the works speak of movement, of bodies crossing borders, of transgenerational skills, of memories stitched into the works of art.
VISITING HOURS
Monday – Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday – Sunday: 12:00-20:00
Faber Splaiul Peneș Curcanul 4-5, Timișoara
ARTIȘTI
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Maja Bajevic, Zeljka Blaksic, Lorena Cocioni, Alle Dicu, Sinisa Ilic, Loredana Ilie, Joan Jonas, Franco Jost, Selma Selman
31.05.202513.07.2025
CURATORS Tevž Logar / Ana Janevski
The Art Encounters Foundation building, constructed between 1904 and 1905, was one of the first structures of the ILSA wool factory. It still carries today the echoes of a double identity after the nationalization of 1948: a space of production of fabrics and upholstery, but also a kindergarten for the workers’ children,
The artworks presented in this venue integrates childhood and interdependent networks that resist essentialism, isolation, and erasure. They reject the imposed borders between male and female, productivity and intimacy, personal and political, and instead affirm a spectrum of possibilities, a plurality of ways to exist.
At the same time, the artworks address broader fractures in our world-the gaping Inequities inflicted by neoliberal governance, the weight of colonial and settler-colonial histories, the ongoing struggles for environmental justice, and the urgent need for remediation in the face of eco-and genocides. The echoes that emerge from these works are pulses towards a possible future where care is recognized as a shared responsibility, where trust is the foundation of human and non-human coexistence.
VISITING HOURS
Monday – Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday – Sunday: 12:00-20:00
Art Encounters Foundation Bd. Take Ionescu 46C, Timișoara
ARTIȘTI
Marieta Chirulescu, Simone Forti, Robert Gabris, Jean Genet, Maria Gutu, Sky Hopinka, Hassan Khan, Jumana Manna, Silvia Moldovan, Eduardo Navarro, Christian Nyampeta, Gavril Pop, Larissa Sansour, Johanna Unzueta, Cecilia Vicuna
29.05.202513.07.2025
CURATOR Mihnea Mircan
Works selected from five Romanian art collections chart the space between the public and the private, the folding together of the individual and the collective in the work of the collector. The works compose a metaphorical gradient between those poles, embodying the distinctions and complicating the reciprocities between vectors such as curiosity or obsession, the experiment or the interrogation, which structure collections and orient them progressively towards the public sphere.
In this context, the works question heritage and dissemination, as well as possible institutional forms: the museum, the publicly accessible archive, the publication series or any other act that makes a personal laboratory available to different communities of interpretation and novel symbolic partnerships. The collections that the project brings together are each at different stages of this process, questioning their initial premises and modus operandi, pairing a purely subjective exercise of taste and the hypothesis of a future institution, which does not imply the abandonment of subjective taste but multiplies the criteria and parameters which shape the collection. Rather, subjectivity summons other interlocutors and ramifies the conversations about singular objects and their role in narrating a cultural moment. The exhibition explores this interim, the interweaving of two systems of reference: curiosity and responsibility, impulse and transparency, are not mutually exclusive, but become entangled with one another as the intimate language that pervades each collection finds new translations, scales, articulations, that can be shared with others.
The works in the exhibition make palpable this narrative arc in the cultural performance of the collector, the evolution from a space of private investigation to one of communality and public obligations, from an internal pulse to wider resonance and from personal biography to cultural history.
VISITING HOURS
Monday – Wednesday/Sunday: Closed
Thursday – Saturday, 11:00-19:00
Jecza Gallery Calea Martirilor 1989 51/52
ARTISTS
Gheorghe Anghel, Radu Belcin, Horia Bernea, Dan Beudean, Maria Brâneț, Mircea Cantor, Radu Carnariu, Eva Cerbu, Nicolae Comănescu, Radu Comșa, Horia Damian, Alex Dascălu, Constantin Flondor, Adela Giurgiu, Ion Grigorescu, Rodrigo Hernández, Nona Inescu, Marcel Janco, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Iosif Király, Alicja Kwade, Matei Lăzărescu, Max Hermann Maxy, Robert Meyten, Daniel Moldoveanu, Ciprian Mureșan, Vlad Nancă, Rosalind Nashashibi, Georgeta Năpăruș, Paul Neagu, Miklós Onucsán, Andrei Pandele, Radu Pandele, Jules Perahim, Milița Petrașcu, Joanna Piotrowska, Laurian Popa, Silvia Radu, Gheorghe Rasovszky, Eugen Roșca, Șerban Savu, Decebal Scriba, Mircea Suciu, Doru Tulcan.
Organiser: ArtCollect – The Art Collectors Association
Collectors: Avi Cicirean, Mariana Florescu, Geanina & Tudor Grecu, Alexandru Rus, Ovidiu Șandor.
My Art Encounters – the mediation program of the sixth edition of the Art Encounters Biennial – invites the public into an open and fluid space where curiosity, imagination and interaction are at the forefront.
This edition of the Biennial explores the historical and contemporary identity of Timișoara through the concept and idea of echo, a metaphor for how art transcends time, space and memory. In this context, My Art Encounters is transformed into a lively setting of interaction and introspection, where artworks, urban landscapes and the audience influence each other, generating a continuous dialog that goes beyond the boundaries of aesthetics and penetrates the deep layers of shared experience, belonging and social consciousness.
Whether you’re dancing with friends at a festival in the woods, marveling at the gastronomy, immersing yourself in the world of theater or discovering the city’s stories, Timisoara offers something for everyone.
The city is home to 8 museums and over 10 art galleries, which speak to the history of the city, from ancient to modern, about art and heritage, about the fight against communism and Timisoara’s culture.
In Timisoara, generous nature and grand historical heritage intertwine to create a memorable experience in a city full of European flair and innovative spirit.
