Artists, and Professor at School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Romanian & British (Bucharest, Birmingham, and Chicago)
Irina Botea Bucan (b. Ploiesti, Romania) has developed a symbiotic artist-educator-researcher methodological framework that consistently questions dominant socio-political ideas and centralizes human and non-human agency as a vehicle for meaning. Choosing to act in diverse contexts, such as: academic institutions, alternative galleries, museums, art biennials, film festivals and generic community centers; she is currently focusing on the de-centralization of cultural discourses and the possibility of sustaining creative differentiation that arguably exists outside of a dominant hegemonic system of values and critique. Since 2013 she has been collaborating with Jon Dean, and currently she is faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and pursuing a PhD at Goldsmiths University in London titled “Unfinishing the Cultural Houses”. Solo and group shows include: 55th Venice Biennale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, New Museum, New York; MUSAC (Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilia and Leon); Pompidou Centre, Paris; National Gallery Jeu de Paume, Paris; Kunsthalle Winterthur; Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid,; MUSAC-Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; U -Turn Quadriennial, Copenhagen; 51st Venice Biennale; Prague Biennale; Kunstforum Vienna; Foksal Gallery, Warsaw; Argos Center for Art and Media, Brussels; MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art), Bucharest; Museum of Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland; Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowki Castle, Warsaw. Festivals: Artefact Festival, Leuven; Rotterdam Film Festival; Impakt Panorama, Utrecht; Polis Adriatic Europe Festival. Awards: 3Arts Visual Artis Award; Impakt Film Festival Silver Award; International Residence at Recollets, Cite des Arts, Paris.
Jon Dean (b. Wolverhampton UK)has been active in the overlapping fields of community-based participatory arts and adult education for over thirty years. A diverse and extensive professional career has witnessed Jon developing and delivering community arts, experiential learning, and cultural programmes across the UK, Romania, and beyond… at the core of these various activities, Jon has consistently embedded the idea that community arts is an aesthetic methodology rooted in differentiated and negotiated strategies designed to place participants at the very core of creative expression and artistic production. Ultimately, a process of personal, social, and critical engagement structured to create a living cultural democracy. Working in collaboration with Irina Botea Bucan, Jon’s projects have been recently shown in Inkubator, Jogja, Columbia University, NY, European Academy of Participation, Amsterdam, Institute for Advanced Studies, CEU, Budapest, ZKM, Karlsruhe, University of Arts, Budapest, Camargue Residency, Cassis, France, Millikin University, US, OSA, Budapest, Fundata, Timișoara, Bucharest (Rezidența 9, Arthub, ARCUB, WASP, , Elvire Popescu Cinema, French Institute, Bucharest Tranzit.ro, Salonul de Proiecte), Sonic Futures -Bacau, Simultan Festival, Loop, Barcelona, Art Encounters Biennial, Timisoara, Romania, NTU – CCA Singapore, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Phillips Museum of Art, US, NoNation, Chicago, Young Artists’ Gallery, Budapest, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, Together with Irina, they have created the Casa Radesti residency.
