Time Passing Through Us

Incorporating a range of mediums, most notably sculpture and text, Romanian artist Ioana Nemeș (1979–2011) produced a body of work that was firmly rooted in local and regional artistic genealogies and attempted to challenge perceptions around the form and content of Eastern European art in the 2000s. All Times at Once at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest was her first retrospective. The exhibition spanned a decade of Nemeș’s practice, from 2001 to 2011, from the beginning of her career as a student under Iosif Kiraly at the University of Arts Bucharest to the year she died unexpectedly at the age of 32 in New York. Drawing from a wide range of influences—including conceptualism, modernism, and folk art—Nemeș managed to create, in the space of just ten years, a body of work that defies comfortable categorization.

Unfolding over two floors, the exhibition opened with three wall-based graphic interventions that provide essential keys to understanding Nemeș’s practice. The first, All Times at Once (2011), lent the exhibition its title and gestures toward multi-directional temporalities, a theme that underpins a significant portion of her work. The second, WHY CAN’T WE IMAGINE A HOT GRAY? (2010), reflects on the emotional potential of color. The third intervention, ABSOLUTE POSITIVE – ABSOLUTE NEGATIVE (2004), introduces Nemeș’s rigorous, “pseudo-scientific” system for evaluating and making sense of the world. These works act as gateways into her most significant series on view.

The first series of works the viewer is introduced to is Monthly Evaluations (2003–2011), largely considered Nemeș’s seminal project. It includes wall-based interventions (vinyl on wall paint), sculptural works (in epoxide, paint, and lacquer), and text-based video installations. Regardless of their format, the method behind Monthly Evaluations was the same: Each day, Nemeș would assess her experience according to her own system of analysis. First, she would assign numerical values to each day using five parameters: Physical (P), Emotional (E), Intellectual (I), Financial (F), and Luck (L). She then rated these parameters from -10 to +10. Each daily entry would also be assigned a summary symbol (+, –, or =) and a color, inspired by the Lüscher Color Test, developed by Swiss psychiatrist Max Lüscher. Then, Nemeș would add a concise, sometimes factual, sometimes poetic text in English to accompany the day’s data. Finally, this day-analysis would often take the shape of a wall-based intervention or sculpture and sometimes, be catalogued within a sub-series, such as “Pause Button” or “Lost Days” (days with no entries).

Nemeș’s aim for Monthly Evaluations was to create a “sculpture of time,” using her autobiography as a system. “I’m not interested in my person,” she said in a 2008 interview with Steve Peralta and Simona Nastac, “but in my interior system of organization and functioning” and “archiving and analyzing is a way of understanding time passing through me.”1 As part of this methodology, Nemeş conducted a series of self-interviews between 2005 and 2010. These fictional conversations—with invented critics such as the tongue-in-cheek “Stuart Aarsman” (supposedly a writer for Afterall, Frieze, etc.)—reveal her critical voice, humor, and skepticism toward art-world authority. In one self-interview, Nemeş described Monthly Evaluations as “a Polaroid of time consumed in a standardized amount of time”—a daily ritual of analysis, where she would perform both the role of pseudo-scientist and subject.2 Another interpretation, as Igor Zabel argues, is that within the communist system, the structure of society and the micro-level details of daily life were inseparable, and that similar artworks, involving an analysis and reflection of one’s experience, “necessarily involve also an (implicit or explicit) research of the social, political, and ideological structures that shaped such experiences.”3 These works could also function as tools for reading the “newly developed, postcommunist social structure and their effects and aims through the details of everyday reality.”4

In the central gallery of the exhibition’s lower floor is the series Relics for the After-Future (BROWN) (2008–2010), which includes mixed-media installations, sculptural works, paintings, and site-specific interventions, and constitutes a significant shift in Nemeș’s practice. Involving both ethnographic research and experiments with new materials, the series includes several explorations of folklore and mythology. It was also imagined as the first part of a larger project, inspired by different geographies and with different chromatic associations. The works in this initial group specifically attempt to recuperate local folklore from the ethno-nationalist manipulation of the recent communist past and refashion it as a tool to navigate a queer future.5 Crafted using traditional techniques from different regions in Romania and materials like wool, wood, and horn, these works return to Nemeş’s interest in multiple, coexisting temporalities, the “relics” being re-imagined for the future. The color brown, included in the title of the series of works, was symbolic for Nemeș and associated with Romania. Brown is often obtained by mixing the three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue—the colors of the Romanian flag. In her own words, “Brown is horizontal, a color to begin with.”6 This particular shade of brown covers the walls in the section dedicated to Relics for the After-Future series, demarcating the exhibition space.

One work in the series, Prototype for The White Team (Satan) (2009), is a folk mask, painted white and adorned with wool, horns and gold-plated teeth, installed on a brown wall. Like most works in the series, Prototype for The White Team marries the aesthetics of folk art with contemporary materials or dissonant details (in this case, golden teeth), reimagining local folklore in a contemporary key. The deliberately dissonant and collaged aesthetics of Relics for the After-Future (BROWN) reflect Nemeș’s view of contemporary Romania: “spectacular and primitive nature, abused or abandoned, villages deserted by people who left to work in Spain, beautiful Maramureș houses bought and moved to France, dusty little towns with communist blocks like ugly shipwrecks, sweaty buses and an intoxicating traffic.”7

Other works in the series, such as Lower Limb (2009), a concrete form adorned with tassels and set on a black-tiled pedestal, reference the work of Brâncuși.8 Her relationship to Brâncuși was “a rather complex one,” as she wrote, having been “intoxicated” with his work since primary school, while at the same time acknowledging that his work had “been contaminated by communist propaganda.”9 Brâncuși’s work, often inspired by Romanian folk traditions, was coopted in Nicolae Ceaușescu’s particular brand of national communism and its cultural policy of protochronism (from the Greek, “proto-chronos,” first in time). In this context, Brâncuși’s work was highlighted as evidence of the singularity and supposedly pioneering character of Romanian culture.

The decade of Nemeș’s career, 2001–2011, was a period of accelerated socio-political transformation in Romania, and Nemeș was sensitively attuned to these processes. The country’s accession to the European Union in 2007 coupled with the global financial crisis of 2008 instigated shifting identities and values within Romanian society. Displayed next to the Relics series, The Healers (2010) comprises eight acrylic-on-paper drawings that are distinct in Nemeș’s practice through the adoption of a comic-like visual language. Inspired by the tragic 2005 Tanacu incident—where an exorcism ritual performed at the Tanacu Monastery led to the death of a nun experiencing severe mental illness—this series mixes humor with social critique, exposing the often-archaic institution of the Romanian Orthodox Church. In Nemeş’s words, the works attempt to “observe the vague border between religion and medicine in Romanian society.”10 The eight drawings depict different scenes: an absurd telephone conversation between a nun and a nurse, a priest and a parishioner during a confessional, and a Christ-like figure, often depicted alongside speech bubbles or elements of text such as “Around here the religious side is profound. Americans have the shrink, Romanians have the church.”

An additional layer to the Tanacu case, which is referenced in the series, was the conflict between the nun’s queer desire and the monastic environment, which allegedly was a trigger for the victim’s mental health crisis. Just four years before the incident, in 2001, the Romanian government had repealed Article 200, which had criminalized same-sex relations and punished them with imprisonment between one to five years. However, social attitudes towards the queer community were largely unchanged. A queer woman herself and sensitive to the struggles of mental ill-health, Nemeș was concerned with the Tanacu case as an indicator of society’s relationship to its minorities and vulnerable groups. One could speculate that the naive visual language and use of humor in The Healers was an attempt to distance herself from the tragic conclusion of the Tanacu incident, or perhaps it was a continuation of Nemeș’s exploration of folk art, reminiscent of the style of the brightly colored tombstones and humorous epitaphs of the Merry Cemetery of Săpânța, in Maramureș County, Romania.

Continuing Nemeș’s interest in the local and regional context, is the series Expensive Fiasco / Cheap Success (2010), which includes drawings, text-based works, and a work in neon. This body of work examines the precarious position of the young Eastern European artist in the global art system. For instance, the text-based wall intervention Letter to a Young Artist or What is Expected from a Romanian Artist in the International Art System (2010) satirically lays out nine survival strategies, such as: “Don’t use neon lights” or “Highlight your exotic roots: use your orthodox religious background, dust off folklore. Dig out the Dracula myth, for example.” The work that gives the series its name humorously ignores this advice: Expensive Fiasco / Cheap Success (2010) consists of a neon tube light shaped into the number “4706,” which represents Nemeș’s ranking on Artfacts.Net, a now-defunct website categorizing 41,000 contemporary artists worldwide. The work also includes a photocopy of the ranking, with Nemeș’s position highlighted in yellow. To Nemeş, a former professional athlete, the ranking probably felt familiar. Prior to her artistic career, Nemeș spent a decade, ages 11 to 21, as a professional handball player on Romania’s National Junior Team. A severe knee injury and failed recovery led her to abandon the professional sports and pursue what she called the “chaotic and creative field of art.”11 However, she often attempted to marry the structure and discipline of meticulous self-observation to the chaotic messiness of creativity.

This series was originally presented in 2010 as a solo exhibition in Bucharest and reflected on a decade of growing interest in Eastern European art. Following large-scale exhibitions such as After the Wall (Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1999–2000), L’autre moitié de l’Europe (Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2000), and Manifesta 3 (Ljubljana, 2000), cultural exchange in Eastern Europe intensified through networks like tranzit (established in 2002) or Akademie Schloss Solitude’s Eastern European program (2003). Nemeș herself participated in several such programs, including residencies with KulturKontakt Austria (2003) and IASPIS in Stockholm (2010), the latter with the fashion label she was part of, Rozalb de Mura.12

On the fourth floor of the museum, the exhibition turned to the Ioana Nemeș Archive, offering deeper insight into her creative process through displaying preparatory sketches, other works or materials relating to her design initiatives, such as Rozalb de Mura (fashion label) or Liste Noire (interior design). Also on display is The Wall Project (2001–2004), a precursor to the Monthly Evaluations series, consisting of photographic storyboards charting her artistic process.

Curated by KILOBASE BUCHAREST—including Dragoș Olea, one of Nemeș’s close collaborators and curators of her archive, and Sandra Demetrescu, MNAC Chief Curator—the retrospective followed a series of exhibitions in 2023 and 2024 in Berlin, Timişoara, and Vienna that reintroduced and recontextualized aspects of her practice. Imagined as a culmination of these exhibitions curated by KILOBASE BUCHAREST, the MNAC retrospective presented the most extensive exhibition of Nemeș’s work to date. Since its opening in 2001, the MNAC was beset with criticisms from the artistic community. Its location in the highly contested and largely inaccessible building of the Palace of the Parliament—otherwise known as Nicolae Ceaușescu’s last megalomaniacal architectural project—was seen as a statement of isolation and elitism of contemporary art, at odds with its developing socially engaged ethos in a postsocialist society. It’s impossible to say what Nemeș, an artist highly conscious of the framing of her work, would have thought of the presentation at MNAC, but it’s clear from her work and writings that she was not afraid of the complexities and often messiness of the art system.

Looking at Nemeș’s practice in the context of early 2000s Romanian or even Eastern European contemporary art, one might be tempted to see her work as atypical. But that would overlook her work’s deeply syncretic character and situated commentary. From blending the sarcastic didacticism of Mladen Stilinović’s An Artist who Cannot Speak English is no Artist (1992), most apparent in her Expensive Fiasco / Cheap Success series, to the exploration of postcommunist myths and clichés found in the work of the Romanian artistic collective subREAL in the ’90s, to Ion Grigorescu's intensive documentation of everyday life or to Lia Perjovschi's meticulous contextualizing and categorizing through the Knowledge Museum, Nemeș was firmly rooted in local and regional artistic genealogies, as well as absorbing influences beyond her geographical context. However, what was atypical of Nemeș’s work was her approach. In the 2000s, the Romanian art scene was mired in internal disagreements and rather tense debates around the role and system of art in a rapidly changing postsocialist society: private versus public funding, the emerging art market, the institutional inheritance of the socialist past, and ultimately, the role of the artist. Nemeș navigated this shifting landscape through an experimental approach—not from a position of assumed neutrality, but more like that of a scientist, constantly testing the limits of our shared reality and sometimes, expanding the possibilities of it. The MNAC retrospective offered a unique opportunity to encounter Nemeș’s seemingly distinct bodies of work and reveal the complex links between them, as well with the sociopolitical context of her time.

1 Ioana Nemeș, "Ioana Nemes," interview by Steve Peralta and Simona Nastac, 2008. https://www.ioananemes.ro/interviews/steve-peralta-2008/.

2 Ioana Nemeș Self-Interviews, "Monthly Evaluations is nothing but an experiment. Stuart Aarsman interviewed Ioana Nemeș in Bucharest," 2009, 18.

3 Igor Zabel, "Intimacy and Society: Post-Communist or Eastern Art?" in Igor Zabel. Contemporary Art Theory, ed. Igor Španjol (JRP Ringier & Les Presses du Reel, 2012), 107.

4 Zabel, "Intimacy and Society," 107.

5 Magda Radu, "Something Somewhere Is at Stake," in Ioana Nemeș. Artist Book, ed. Alina Șerban and Ștefania Ferchedău (Spector Books, 2014), 69.

6 Radu, "Something Somewhere Is at Stake," 62.

7 Radu, "Something Somewhere Is at Stake," 62.

8 Radu, "Something Somewhere Is at Stake," 71.

9 Ioana Nemeș Self-Interviews, "Brâncuși is Still a National Icon, Nevertheless One that is Understood Locally, Limited and Contaminated by the Communist Propaganda. Thorgils Fridjónsson interviewed Ioana Nemeș in Bucharest," 2010. https://www.ioananemes.ro/interviews/thorgils-fridjonsson-2010/.

10 Radu, "Something Somewhere Is at Stake," 71.

11 Ioana Nemeș Self-Interviews, “Monthly Evaluations is nothing but an experiment,” 17.

12 Fanny Hauser, “Zombie Walking Through Vienna. Ioana Nemeș in the context of the 2000s,” Ioana Nemeș Archive, 2025.

Simina Neagu is an artist, curator, and writer from Bucharest, based in London. Her writing has appeared in publications such as springerin, Revista ARTA, and Kajet Journal, among others. She has worked at arts organisations including iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and Chisenhale Gallery, as well as an artist assistant for Céline Condorelli and Aleksandra Mir. She was a coeditor of Assuming Asymmetries: Conversations on Curating Public Art Projects of the 1980s and 1990s and Curating Beyond the Mainstream (both Sternberg Press, 2022). She received an MA in Aesthetics and Art Theory from CRMEP, Kingston University London and was an Artist Associate at Open School East, UK (2022-2023) and artist-in-residence at Toplocentrala - Regional Centre for Contemporary Art, Bulgaria (2023-2024). She works as a Health Projects Coordinator at Roma Support Group in London.

All images: photo © Serioja Bocsok / MNAC

Monthly Evaluations images: Courtesy of Ioana Nemeș Archive.