STRUGGLE

Art history often romanticises the suffering of the artist, projecting them towards an edge where they are solitary, misunderstood, and — inevitably — appreciated only after death. STRUGGLE is an exhibition proposal that desacralises this myth, showing — through the invitation extended to seven artists from different generations — how their practices are shaped equally by doubt, personal tragedy, or fear, as well as by confidence or small everyday victories. In this way, the artistic process is no longer subsumed by the creator’s suffering, but by their willingness to shape the feelings that visit them into palpable arrangements of their own affect.

Studio 7_9 will bring together artistic projects from the last twenty years — unfinished, abandoned, materialising for the first time on the occasion of this edition of #rmhffest, or simply ones that have left traces in those who received them.

Dan Basu

Dan Basu (b. 1983) is an artist working at the intersection of video art, installation, photography, and graphic design. His practice is meditative regardless of the medium chosen, and it explores inner transformations before turning to outer ones.

Dan is interested in the artistic process, in the way ideas take on material manifestations, and in how this process can be guided and encouraged.

Dumitru Gorzo

Dumitru Gorzo (b. 1975, Ieud, Maramureș) is one of the most active and prolific contemporary visual artists in Romania. A graduate of the National University of Arts in Bucharest, Painting department, Gorzo is co-founder of the Rostopasca group and is known for his multidisciplinary practice combining painting, sculpture, installation, and public space intervention.

He has exhibited widely both in Romania and internationally — in New York, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Basel, Brussels, and Dublin — in galleries, museums, and alternative spaces.

Daniela Pălimariu

Daniela Pălimariu (b. 1986) is a visual artist based in Bucharest. Her artistic practice encompasses inhabitable media and objects, installations, semi-private events, and drawings, all of which foreground the ambiguity of human relationships, the need for personal space, play, and everyday subversions.

Daniela is one of the co-founders of the Sandwich art space in Bucharest (since 2016) and, since 2023, co-artistic director of RAD Art Fair. Her work has been exhibited at Nicodim Gallery, Ivan Gallery, tranzit.ro, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Salonul de Proiecte, Sandwich, Himera, C5 Gallery, and C5CNM Beijing, as well as at LISTE Art Fair Basel and ART021 Shanghai. She has also been an artist in residence at Message Salon Zurich (CH), The Model (IRL), Nida Art Colony (LT), and EstNordEst (Quebec, CA). Her work has been installed in public spaces in Innsbruck (AT) and Beijing (CN), as well as at RAD Sculpture Park (2023, 2024, 2025).

Cristian Răduță

Cristian Răduță (b. 1982) lives and works in Bucharest, Romania. He is one of the co-founders of the Sandwich group. His artistic practice encompasses sculpture, objects, and installations that often spring from hypothetical or absurd situations, populated by characters full of humour and subtle irony. Răduță is particularly interested in the tensions and relationships generated by the industrial and bricolage materials he uses, exploring how matter itself can shift meaning and narrative.

His work is held in collections including the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), the Clay & Glass Gallery in Ontario, the Art in Embassies Collection (USA), and Art Collection Telekom, as well as private collections in Europe, the United States, and Canada. His solo exhibitions have been presented at Nicodim Gallery (Los Angeles and Bucharest), CLC Gallery Venture (Beijing), Sandwich, Institutul Prezentului, and Art Basel Hong Kong.

He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and biennials, including Art Encounters (Timișoara), UCCA Lab (Beijing), Rotor Art Space (Graz), Billytown (The Hague), Nida Art Colony (Lithuania), Kunsthalle Bega, MNAC, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.

Dumitrița Răzlog

Dumitrița Răzlog uses photography to open a crack for the imagination, transforming images into visual meta-narratives that reflect everyday experience in the age of the internet and deepfake technology.

Born in the Republic of Moldova, she studied Mural Art in Bucharest and held two scholarships in Italy, where she defined her visual language. She is a doctoral candidate at the National University of Arts in Bucharest and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bari, where she researches post-photography in relation to her own artistic practice.

She likes ricotta and summer days on the balcony. Her dream is peace on earth.

Nadina Stoica

Nadina Stoica (b. 1997, Romania) is an artist from Constanța, based in Bucharest. She completed her BA and MA studies in the Photography and Dynamic Image department at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Her artistic practice examines the subtle relationships between body and space, intimacy and landscape, the defragmentation of memory and identity, often approached from a psychological or phenomenological perspective. Her projects evolve through observation, writing, and visual experimentation, positioning photography both as an investigative tool and as a reflexive process. Nadina’s artistic approach is distinguished by the conceptual coherence with which each series of works contributes to the construction of the artist’s personal mythology.

Luminița Apostu Toma

Luminița Apostu Toma (b. 1985) is a visual artist, curator, and writer from Iași. Her practice unfolds at the intersection of theoretical reflection and artistic production. She has published essays on art and reviews in publications including Suplimentul de cultură, Arhitext, Timpul, Observator Cultural, Contrasens, Kajet Journal, and Vector. As an artist, she has participated in group exhibitions with installations (object, video, and sound), site-specific interventions, and text-based works that explore the relationship between art and everyday life. She is interested in the ways art schools and institutions change people when art becomes work.

Maria Bîrsan — Curator

Cultural manager and curator, Maria Bîrsan works at the intersection of curatorial research, artistic production, and community building. She is Gallery Director at Sandwich Gallery and founder of Sandwich Library, a hybrid space dedicated to visual arts and curatorial studies, physically located at Atelierele Malmaison. She firmly believes in public space as a cultural resource.