The White Night of Galleries / NAG, Botoșani, 2026
OPEN STUDIO: ANA MARIA MICU, WITH ELENA ARCIRE AND DAN SOCIU
Dates | October 2, 3, and 4, 2026
Visiting hours daily | 12:00 - 20:00
Venue | Ana Maria Micu Studio, 9 Primăverii Street, Entrance C, 3rd Floor, Apartment 7, Intercom 07, Botoșani, 710108, Romania
Contact by phone | 0720038766
Botoșani NAG Partner | Centrul Cultural Botoșani
https://2026.noapteagaleriilor.ro/en/botosani/proiect/1301
Comunicat în română (pdf 1.5MB)
During the current edition of the White Night of the Galleries, the first one to be held in Botoșani, the studio of artist Ana Maria Micu opens to the public as a hybrid workspace, hosting a visual and literary dialogue alongside guest artist Elena Arcire and guest writer Dan Sociu.
The host shows the painting "brick and mortar but... Yellow, Simona, Qargo" (2026). A second focus is book illustration, through the series "Etchings of Inhabited Fiction" (2026), composed of 32 drawings created as a reaction to Dan Sociu's poems from "Purgatoriul", a volume recently published by the independent publishing house Fantomas.
In a separate room, Elena Arcire unveils process stages of her project "The Daughter of Time", a narrative structured in three series of analog pinhole photographs.
OPEN STUDIO: ANA MARIA MICU, WITH ELENA ARCIRE AND DAN SOCIU
Dates | October 2, 3, and 4, 2026
Visiting hours daily | 12:00 - 20:00
Venue | Ana Maria Micu Studio, 9 Primăverii Street, Entrance C, 3rd Floor, Apartment 7, Intercom 07, Botoșani, 710108, Romania
Contact by phone | 0720038766
Botoșani NAG Partner | Centrul Cultural Botoșani
https://2026.noapteagaleriilor.ro/en/botosani/proiect/1301
Comunicat în română (pdf 1.5MB)
During the current edition of the White Night of the Galleries, the first one to be held in Botoșani, the studio of artist Ana Maria Micu opens to the public as a hybrid workspace, hosting a visual and literary dialogue alongside guest artist Elena Arcire and guest writer Dan Sociu.
The host shows the painting "brick and mortar but... Yellow, Simona, Qargo" (2026). A second focus is book illustration, through the series "Etchings of Inhabited Fiction" (2026), composed of 32 drawings created as a reaction to Dan Sociu's poems from "Purgatoriul", a volume recently published by the independent publishing house Fantomas.
In a separate room, Elena Arcire unveils process stages of her project "The Daughter of Time", a narrative structured in three series of analog pinhole photographs.
ANA MARIA MICU – PAINTING
"brick and mortar but ... Yellow, Simona, Qargo", 2026, acrylic and acrylic inks on canvas, 150 x 200 cm.
The intention of the work was a formal, technical one, built on the capacity of color and painting to emit themselves. I wanted it to start from yellow, so as to ultimately achieve something that could be called the qualia of yellow, the sensation that a warm presence emanates from the painting. An image that was initially a colored drawing on a yellow background transitioned toward fields of intentionally mixed colors, so that every shade physically contains a minute amount of yellow, in the case of cold colors, and a generous one in the case of warm colors. The only color I used as such, without mixing it with others, was cadmium yellow.
The photograph underlying the painting is a special one from my collection of sources, from a day when I imposed on myself as an exercise a pause in time, a calm stillness, to rest and to observe. It promptly returned a sensation that, at least for that moment, everything was as it should be. In memory of that day, in an attempt to relive that state of grace, I spent about 30 days mapping details in an image too complicated for a regular act of painting. And it became very clear to me that this is the way I paint – surrounding a detail and declaring with a color – this thing is known and marked as leaf, or mug, or metal. The gestures are repeated until everything unfolding under the gaze is indexed and clarified, at which point the painting is also finalized. Unlike the traditional horror vacui, my practice is driven by a horror indistincti – a rejection of visual ambiguity and nonsense. I do not clutter the canvas to escape the void, but I linger on it until every amorphous element is forced to declare its shape and belonging.
"brick and mortar but ... Yellow, Simona, Qargo", 2026, acrylic and acrylic inks on canvas, 150 x 200 cm.
The intention of the work was a formal, technical one, built on the capacity of color and painting to emit themselves. I wanted it to start from yellow, so as to ultimately achieve something that could be called the qualia of yellow, the sensation that a warm presence emanates from the painting. An image that was initially a colored drawing on a yellow background transitioned toward fields of intentionally mixed colors, so that every shade physically contains a minute amount of yellow, in the case of cold colors, and a generous one in the case of warm colors. The only color I used as such, without mixing it with others, was cadmium yellow.
The photograph underlying the painting is a special one from my collection of sources, from a day when I imposed on myself as an exercise a pause in time, a calm stillness, to rest and to observe. It promptly returned a sensation that, at least for that moment, everything was as it should be. In memory of that day, in an attempt to relive that state of grace, I spent about 30 days mapping details in an image too complicated for a regular act of painting. And it became very clear to me that this is the way I paint – surrounding a detail and declaring with a color – this thing is known and marked as leaf, or mug, or metal. The gestures are repeated until everything unfolding under the gaze is indexed and clarified, at which point the painting is also finalized. Unlike the traditional horror vacui, my practice is driven by a horror indistincti – a rejection of visual ambiguity and nonsense. I do not clutter the canvas to escape the void, but I linger on it until every amorphous element is forced to declare its shape and belonging.
ANA MARIA MICU – BOOK ILLUSTRATION WITH GUEST WRITER DAN SOCIU
Ana Maria Micu, "Etchings of Inhabited Fiction", 32 drawings, 2026, Winsor & Newton black India ink on Canson Imagine paper 350 gsm, 30.3 x 22 cm (paper format).
Dan Sociu, "Purgatoriul", Fantomas Publishing, Arad, RO, 2026
Ana Maria Micu's series "Etchings of Inhabited Fiction" (2026) was created specifically for this book, as a visual and conceptual response to Sociu's poems. The 32 images are freely drawn with India ink on paper, without photographic references, through an intuitive process that occasionally involved listening to the poems via a text-to-speech function, in a continuous loop.
Dan Sociu (b. 1978) is a Romanian writer and translator. He has published numerous volumes of poetry and prose, obtaining important literary distinctions. Among his notable works are the poetry collections "cântece eXcesive" (2005) and "Uau!" (2019), alongside novels such as "Urbancolia" (2008). Expanding his international presence, his poetry volume "Deep Fakes" (2026), translated into English by Monica Cure, will soon be published by World Poetry Books. In addition to his work as an author, he has translated numerous works from English and participated in artistic residencies at Art Omi (Ledig House) in the United States and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany.
https://www.instagram.com/dansociu/
Fantomas is an independent publishing house based in Arad, Romania, coordinated by Vasile Leac. It focuses on experimental cultural phenomena and contemporary literature, prioritizing emerging and unconventional voices.
https://fantomas.ro/
PRESS
Pre-announcement with book excerpt at Clivaj
Ana Maria Micu, "Etchings of Inhabited Fiction", 32 drawings, 2026, Winsor & Newton black India ink on Canson Imagine paper 350 gsm, 30.3 x 22 cm (paper format).
Dan Sociu, "Purgatoriul", Fantomas Publishing, Arad, RO, 2026
Ana Maria Micu's series "Etchings of Inhabited Fiction" (2026) was created specifically for this book, as a visual and conceptual response to Sociu's poems. The 32 images are freely drawn with India ink on paper, without photographic references, through an intuitive process that occasionally involved listening to the poems via a text-to-speech function, in a continuous loop.
Dan Sociu (b. 1978) is a Romanian writer and translator. He has published numerous volumes of poetry and prose, obtaining important literary distinctions. Among his notable works are the poetry collections "cântece eXcesive" (2005) and "Uau!" (2019), alongside novels such as "Urbancolia" (2008). Expanding his international presence, his poetry volume "Deep Fakes" (2026), translated into English by Monica Cure, will soon be published by World Poetry Books. In addition to his work as an author, he has translated numerous works from English and participated in artistic residencies at Art Omi (Ledig House) in the United States and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany.
https://www.instagram.com/dansociu/
Fantomas is an independent publishing house based in Arad, Romania, coordinated by Vasile Leac. It focuses on experimental cultural phenomena and contemporary literature, prioritizing emerging and unconventional voices.
https://fantomas.ro/
PRESS
Pre-announcement with book excerpt at Clivaj
GUEST ARTIST ELENA ARCIRE – OPEN STUDIO
The working stage of the "Daughter of Time" project, an exhibition that aims to tell a story through 3 series of analog pinhole photographs.
"Imagine Time as a horse with seven hooves, running the wheel of the world to set the lives of mortals in motion.
Time, existing with mortals for ages upon ages, grows fond of them and, out of a desire to understand what it means to live, decides to give itself entirely to them, dying and dividing itself among each of them.
The mortals, finding the corpse of Time, are frightened and do not know how to move their lives, so, together with The Three Mothers, they create a substitute: out of the bones of Time, pieces of star, and human spirit. They chained this creature to Earth, trapping one of the star pieces in the sea, and named her the Daughter of Time.
At every cycle, the Daughter of Time would die, and her soul would be consumed, traveling to the Mist beyond times, bringing the souls of mortals back onto the wheel of the world. There, her own body awaited her to start turning the wheel again and again and again.
One day, however, the Daughter of Time would notice that the wheel would not carry on much longer alongside her soul. She chooses to leave the Celestial World, departing towards the only place she could not run from, becoming human, searching for both her father and her purpose, in the hope that the Wheel will not stop forever."
Elena Arcire is an experimental artist who graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca in 2024 and participated in the International Ceramics Biennale "Artele Focului" 2022 (Cluj-Napoca Art Museum), the exhibition "Sub Vitrum" 2023 (La Cave, Cluj-Napoca), and the "Expo Maraton" 2024 (Casa Matei Gallery, Cluj-Napoca) with the exhibition project "A Body without A Name". In her artistic practice, she integrates diverse techniques, including photography, textile arts, narrative, sound, and glass. Through the creative process, Elena attempts to understand the functioning systems of the world in order to improve the way she moves through life and the communities she is a part of. This act comes into being through the deconstruction of observed patterns (feelings, traditions, experiences, rhythms) and their recomposition, processing them and offering them to the community.
https://www.instagram.com/elena_arcire/
The working stage of the "Daughter of Time" project, an exhibition that aims to tell a story through 3 series of analog pinhole photographs.
"Imagine Time as a horse with seven hooves, running the wheel of the world to set the lives of mortals in motion.
Time, existing with mortals for ages upon ages, grows fond of them and, out of a desire to understand what it means to live, decides to give itself entirely to them, dying and dividing itself among each of them.
The mortals, finding the corpse of Time, are frightened and do not know how to move their lives, so, together with The Three Mothers, they create a substitute: out of the bones of Time, pieces of star, and human spirit. They chained this creature to Earth, trapping one of the star pieces in the sea, and named her the Daughter of Time.
At every cycle, the Daughter of Time would die, and her soul would be consumed, traveling to the Mist beyond times, bringing the souls of mortals back onto the wheel of the world. There, her own body awaited her to start turning the wheel again and again and again.
One day, however, the Daughter of Time would notice that the wheel would not carry on much longer alongside her soul. She chooses to leave the Celestial World, departing towards the only place she could not run from, becoming human, searching for both her father and her purpose, in the hope that the Wheel will not stop forever."
Elena Arcire is an experimental artist who graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca in 2024 and participated in the International Ceramics Biennale "Artele Focului" 2022 (Cluj-Napoca Art Museum), the exhibition "Sub Vitrum" 2023 (La Cave, Cluj-Napoca), and the "Expo Maraton" 2024 (Casa Matei Gallery, Cluj-Napoca) with the exhibition project "A Body without A Name". In her artistic practice, she integrates diverse techniques, including photography, textile arts, narrative, sound, and glass. Through the creative process, Elena attempts to understand the functioning systems of the world in order to improve the way she moves through life and the communities she is a part of. This act comes into being through the deconstruction of observed patterns (feelings, traditions, experiences, rhythms) and their recomposition, processing them and offering them to the community.
https://www.instagram.com/elena_arcire/
Elena Arcire, Documentary diptych, 2026.
Left: original pinhole photograph negative on photosensitive paper with irregularly cut edges (9.7 x 8.5 cm). Right: positive obtained through digital inversion.
Left: original pinhole photograph negative on photosensitive paper with irregularly cut edges (9.7 x 8.5 cm). Right: positive obtained through digital inversion.
