GLORIÆ Art Gallery develops the residency component of Shakespeare Visual through an international open call dedicated to independent artists and interdisciplinary collectives. The programme brings together artists from Romania and abroad, invited to develop new works in Craiova inspired by Shakespeare’s universe and the theme of the 2026 edition - WILL matters. Over the course of the festival, the selected projects take shape through research, experimentation, and dialogue, exploring contemporary visual languages ranging from installation, photography, and sculpture to video art and multimedia practices.
GLORIÆ Art Gallery is a contemporary art space dedicated to interdisciplinary collaboration and emerging artistic practices. Through exhibitions, residencies, and curatorial projects, the gallery promotes creative freedom, cultural dialogue, and the exchange of ideas between artists, audiences, and communities.
Exhibition opening: May 23, 6:00 p.m.
We Are Such Stuff - Sevan Székely - Romania
Sevan Székely approaches Prospero’s line from a political perspective of power and illusion, presenting a site-specific installation featuring large-scale painting, sound, and light that questions how contemporary reality is controlled, staged, and colonized through imagery.
Sevan Székely is a painter based in Cluj-Napoca. His practice explores painting as a space of instability, where bodies fragment, hybridize, and carry symbolic weight, oscillating between the figurative and the abstract. Drawing inspiration from myths, rituals, and contemporary social realities, he creates images and installations that connect psychological transformations with political and spatial issues.
Tempestuous - Danielle Rosa - Brazilia
“Tempestuous” is a photographic research project that reinterprets female archetypes from The Tempest: Miranda, Sycorax, and Claribel, within a contemporary urban context. Through performative self-portraiture, the artist translates the tensions between innocence, ancestral power, and exile into the streets and architectural landscapes of Craiova, transforming the city into a symbolic “island.” The project explores the relationship between the female body and public space, investigating how classical Shakespearean figures can be reimagined through the textures and rhythms of a modern Eastern European environment. Blending performance and photography, the work constructs a visual narrative in which presence, identity, and place intersect.
Danielle Rosa is a Brazilian visual artist and filmmaker whose practice focuses on women’s histories, memory, and the body as a site of resistance. Working with photography, performance, and self-portraiture, she develops projects that reinterpret classical narratives through contemporary and feminist perspectives. Her work has been presented in exhibitions and audiovisual formats both in Brazil and internationally.
The Pavilion of Dreams - Lena Ciobanu - România
“The Pavilion of Dreams” is an immersive installation that transforms the gallery into a living, evolving organism situated between reality and imagination. Inspired by the dreamlike landscapes of The Tempest, the project explores how inner worlds, memory, sensation, and imagination, can take material form and shape spatial experience. Through a dynamic architecture composed of wooden structures, suspended elements, and contrasting hemispheres, the work creates a sensorial environment that invites visitors to move, pause, and reflect. The pavilion functions as a shared ecology of the dream, where personal and collective narratives intersect, and where space itself becomes a site of transformation, presence, and perception.
Lena Ciobanu is a Romanian visual artist working across photography, installation, video, sound, and performance. Her practice explores human relationships, mythic imaginaries, and systems of interconnection, often drawing from ecological thinking and research into natural life forms. Through an intuitive and autoethnographic approach, she creates immersive environments where vulnerability, play, and collective experience generate spaces of encounter and transformation. Her work has been presented in exhibitions and residencies in Romania and internationally, including projects developed within research-based and community-oriented contexts.
Untitled - "Stol Collective (Anio Ciutac, Mara Verhooogt & Marco Verhoogt)" - Romania
STOL Collective presents a mixed-media installation that explores the contemporary relationship with Shakespeare and, more broadly, with the notion of theatricality, the stage, and life as a performance. Using various techniques (photography, sculpture, and drawing), they create a map of Shakespearean impressions crystallized in the collective imagination.
Stol Collective is an interdisciplinary group formed by artists working across video, photography, ceramics, and textiles, whose practices converge around the relationship between fiction and reality. Combining documentary methods with theatrical strategies, the collective explores how narratives are constructed and performed, challenging the notion of objectivity in both film and everyday life. Their collaborative approach brings together distinct yet complementary perspectives, resulting in works that examine the performative nature of identity, social roles, and perception
The Breath Between Us / The Shakespearean Plant - A Vegetal Interface for Voice, Proximity, and Textual Memory - Mircea Cîrtog - România
“The Breath Between Us / The Shakespearean Plant” is an interactive installation that transforms a living plant into a biological interface between the human body and the texts of William Shakespeare. By capturing the visitor’s proximity, breath, and micro-gestures, the work generates a dynamic soundscape and fragmented vocalizations, where Shakespearean text emerges as an unstable, responsive material. The installation reimagines Shakespeare beyond representation, positioning it as a living, relational process activated through presence and interaction. Situated at the intersection of biology, technology, and performance, the project invites audiences into a space of active listening, where meaning is continuously negotiated between the body, the organism, and the system.
Mircea Cîrtog is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of technology, sound, and installation. His practice explores the relationship between the human body, living systems, and digital interfaces, developing interactive works that respond to the presence and gestures of the audience. By integrating biological elements and generative systems, he creates immersive environments in which viewers become active participants in the production of meaning.
