BIO
Mariana Hultoană (b. 2001, Dorohoi, Romania) is a visual artist based in Iași, working with painting and installation. Her practice explores contemporary painting as a space of disorientation, absence, and embodied perception, situated between the logic of digital systems and lived experience.
Detached from stable reference points, her work investigates states of liminality and non-place, where orientation collapses and meaning is continuously deferred. Hultoană engages with themes of waiting, silence, and the instability of sense, constructing visual situations in which the body becomes both subject and measuring tool. References to cartography, screens, and algorithmic navigation recur as metaphors
for a world governed by abstract systems that fail to fully organize human presence.
Through layered painterly compositions and spatial interventions, her work oscillates between figuration and abstraction, simulating attempts to impose coherence while exposing the fragility of such structures. Rather than offering fixed meanings, her practice embraces ambiguity, absence, and the absurd as material conditions of the present.
She holds a BFA and MFA in Painting from the George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași, and completed international painting and figure-drawing courses in Spain.
CV
ABOUT
MARIANA HULTOANĂ
b. 2001, Dorohoi, Romania
Lives and works between Romania and Spain
EDUCATION
George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași – BA and MA, 2025
REPRESENTATION
Borderline Art Space, Romania
SELECTED SOLO SHOWS
2025
The Unbearable Lightness of Absurdity at Borderline Art Space, Iaşi, Romania
SELECTED GROUP SHOWS
2025
SCAF- Contemporan Art Festival, Brukenthal Palace & Ursuline Monastery, Sibiu, Romania
Diploma Show, ARCUB – Hanul Gabroveni, Bucharest, Romania
Catalizator – Cred în România, Bucharest, Romania, 2025
National Painting Biennial, Constanța, Romania
Seeing Things, MoBU – The International Art Fair of Bucharest, Romexpo Central Pavilion, Bucharest, Romania
Romanian Creative Week – Here. Now! Union Museum (Muzeul Unirii), Iași, Romania
Emerging Me: Breaking the ice, Art Movements Foundation and Scemtovici&Benowitz Gallery, Bucharest, RomaniaATELIER 35, Group exhibition, Baia Turcească (CIAC), Iași, Romania, ATELIER 35 Award
2024
Erotica, Group exhibition, Baia Turcească (CIAC), Iași, Romania
Laboratories of Time, MoBU – The International Art Fair of Bucharest, Romexpo Central Pavilion, Bucharest, Romania
The Present in Art, Conference and group exhibition, Vasile Pârvan Museum, Bârlad, Romania
Four Elements, Thematic group exhibition, Barbagelata Contemporary Art Foundation, Barcelona, Spain
Cei Noi / Graduate Curated, Curated group exhibition, MARe – Museum of Recent Art, Bucharest, Romania, 2024
Explorations in the Aesthetics of Non-Figurative Representation, group exhibition, Galeria Labirint, Casa M. Ursachi, Iași, Romania
ATELIER 35, group exhibition, Galeria de Artă „O. Băncilă”, Iași, Romania
ARTIS Symposium, artist presentations and group exhibition, Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, Iași, Romania
International Art Biennial – Meeting Point, group exhibition, National Delta Gallery, Alfa Gallery & Ioan Slavici Classical Theatre, Arad, Romania
2023
The Evanescent – Collaboration with artist John Burton McGarity, International exhibition, LUMEN Festival, Waterloo, Canada
The Currents of Mallet Creek, exhibition, Galeria Aparte, Iași, Romania, (collaborator – video student)
Memoria de los materiales, Collaborative group exhibition with Mexican artists, Aparte Space – Faculty Gallery, Iași, Romania
Zis și Făcut, Group exhibition, Iași, Romania
Flowers – Self-Portraits, multimedia visual art installation, “Dr. Ștefan Possa” Hall, “I. I. Mironescu” Cultural Center, Iași, Romania
Annual Exhibition of Botoșani Artists, group exhibition, “Ștefan Luchian” Art Galleries, Botoșani, Romania
Art in the Feminine, group exhibition, “Ștefan Luchian” Art Galleries, Botoșani, Romania
ConceptART Creative Camp, painting and photography residency, Casa de Cultură a Studenților, Iași, Romania
Open Doors Days – Faculty of Visual Arts and Design, collective exhibition and educational event, UNAGE Iași, Romania
ATELIER 35, group exhibition, Art Galleries of the Arts Centre, Bucharest, Romania
Visiting Art History, Lost Steps Hall, Iasi, Romania.
2022
Around the Square, International group exhibition, Duke Hall Gallery, James Madison University, Virginia, USA
Empathies on Both Sides of the Prut, Group exhibition, dual venue project, Chișinău, Republic of Moldova & Iași, Romania
