Alina Șerban

Alina Șerban is an independent art historian, art writer, curator, and editor. She holds an MA in the history and theory of art from the National University of Art in Bucharest and completed two years of her PhD research at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She is currently finishing her PhD at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Her research addresses issues of horizontality in postwar Eastern European art and architecture, different regional constructions of conceptualism, and exhibition practices of the 1970s and 1980s. In 2008, she created monographic exhibitions on Ana Lupaș and Geta Brătescu at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck (in collaboration with Silvia Eiblmayr), and, in 2009, curated the Romanian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Recently she curated a landmark exhibition entitled 24 Arguments: Early Encounters in Romanian Neo-avant-garde 1969–1971 at the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest (2019). She also (co)curated a series of exhibitions that offered introspection on the complex interrelations between art, architecture, collective culture, and the dynamic of public spaces in Romania during the 1960s and 1970s, and also after the 1990s, among them Enchanting Views: Romanian Black Sea Tourism Planning and Architecture of the 1960s and 1970s (Sala Dalles, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, 2014).

In 2017, Alina Șerban co-founded The Institute of the Present in Bucharest (with Ștefania Ferchedău). IP is a research and artist resource platform focusing on visual and performing arts in Romania within the local, regional, and international contexts. In 2013, she founded the independent publishing program P+4 Publications in Bucharest. Dedicated to Romanian contemporary photography, art, and architecture, the program explores the book medium as a point of encounter between theoretical research, graphic design experiment, and the ideas and subjects tackled by artists in their practice. (2022)