Graduate Students
Cristina Albu
Modern/Contemporary
cra9@pitt.edu
http://hemlock.fa.pitt.edu/albu/
An increasing number of contemporary artists are creating works that respond to the growing awareness of ecological crisis. While some seek to evoke direct experiences of natural phenomena, others raise questions about the nature of social perceptions of such phenomena. Albu is currently pursuing research on site-specific installations of contemporary artists who question the Manichean relations between nature and technology, reality and artificial constructions, universality and locality. She is particularly interested in the way environmentalist rhetoric and ‘relational aesthetics’ act as an interface for each other in contemporary installations in order to consolidate active engagement with ecological issues.
CV Highlights
Education
PhD: History of Art and Architecture, degree expected 2011
Research area: Contemporary Art and Critical Theory, advisor: Prof. Terry Smith
MA: History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, 2005-2007, Thesis: “The Site-Specific Installations of Andy Goldsworthy and Olafur Eliasson: Environmental Problematics and Relational Aesthetics”
MA: European Cultural Policy and Administration, University of Warwick, 2003-2004, Thesis: “Negotiations over Spatial Configurations in Contemporary Art Galleries and Museums"
BA: English - American Studies, University of Bucharest, 1999-2003, summa cum laude
BA: European Cultural Studies, University of Bucharest, 1999-2003
Selected Publications
"Anthony Caro's Déjeuner sur l'herbe II: Inside and Outside the Frame of Picturality" in Kritikos. Journal of Postmodern Cultural Sound, Text and Image, Volume 3 (December 2006)
“The Indexicality of the Triptych Video Constructions in Isaac Julien's Installations” in Isaac Julien. True North. Fantome Afrique, Veit Görner and Eveline Bernasconi ed., (OstfildernRuit: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2006) pp. 73-80
Co-translator of Circles in Water, Stefania Ferchedau ed. (Bucharest: ECUMEST Association, 2005)
Conferences
"Hans Haacke and Martha Rosler: Word-Image Dialectics in Photography of the 1970s," 8th International Conference on Word and Image Studies, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris, July 2008
"Entropic Discourse in Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and Henry Thoreau's Walden," RAAS-Fulbright Biennial Conference, University of Bucharest, May 2008
"Conviviality and Place Relationality in the Site-Specific Installations of Andy Goldsworthy and Olafur Eliasson," Grad Expo conference, Pittsburgh University, March 2008
"Problematics of Postcolonial Dislocation in the Case of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest," 32nd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, The University of Melbourne, January 2008
“A Postcolonial Analysis of the Debate on the Foundation of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest,” GOSECA conference, Pittsburgh University, February 2007
“The Disavowal of Modernity via the Fusion of Science and Art in Olafur Eliasson’s Site-Specific Installations,” Graduate Student Symposium, Pittsburgh University, March 2005
“A Report on the Troubled Condition of Cultural Policy in Postmodernism,” Cultural Policy and Arts Production Conference, Belgrade University, October 2004
“Why We Have Not Turned to Speaking a Universal Language?,” Open Society Institute Midyear Conference, Nottingham University, April 2004
Awards and Honors
U.S. National Committee for the History of Art Scholarship, January 2008
Dissertation Development Grant, University of Pittsburgh, Summer 2007
Arts and Sciences Graduate Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh, 2005-2006
Open Society Institute and Chevening Scholarship, 2003-2004
UNESCO Summer School special award, 2002
Teaching Experience
University of Pittsburgh
Teaching Fellow: Instructor, Introduction to Contemporary Art, summer 2007
Teaching Assistant: Recitation Instructor - Introduction to Contemporary Art, spring 2007, Recitation Instructor -Introduction to Architecture, fall 2006
Stand-in Instructor, Introduction to Contemporary Art, November - December 2007