Graduate Students
Cristina Albu
Modern/Contemporary
cra9@pitt.edu
http://hemlock.fa.pitt.edu/albu/
In my doctoral research, I explore contemporary art practices that challenge social interaction through processes of self-mirroring and multi-sensorial perception. Under the impact of computer technology and surveillance upon our awareness of corporeal presence, we acquire a more distinct sense of our position within the world and our relation to others. Objecting to the idea that our senses are undergoing a progressive weakening, I argue that we have developed strategies of catalyzing our attention to processing concurrent sensorial stimuli and negotiating our identity based on the way we are perceived by the people with whom we share real or virtual spaces. Many contemporary artists, such as Olafur Eliasson and Rafael-Lozano Hemmer, enact processes of self-mirroring as an impetus for dialogue with oneself and with others. They create participatory works that heighten viewers' sense experience of the exhibition site, transforming the supposedly neutral white cube galleries into sensorial fields with unstable coordinates. Initial Narcissistic inclinations, stimulated by the presence of reflective surfaces or sensors reacting to one's movement, are counteracted by a mediated encounter with other active observers and users of the same perceptual space.
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
“Between Expanded Consciousness and Expanded Bodies: Affective Relationality to Invisible Architecture," to be published in Athanor, Vol.28 (Fall, 2010)
“Science in the Arts since 1945,” to be published in Alfred J. Andrea ed., World History Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2010)
"Problematics of Postcolonial Dislocation in the Case of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest," Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration, Convergence (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2009) pp. 1071-1076.
“Entropic Discourse in Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Thoreau’s Walden,” in Rodica Mihaila and Irina Grigorescu Pana eds., The Sense of America. Histories into Text (Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 2009) pp. 125-137
"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
“Between Expanded Consciousness and Expanded Bodies: Affective Relationality to Invisible Architecture," 27th Annual Art History Graduate Student Symposium, Florida State University, October 2009
“Affective Encounters with Man-Machine Networks in the Installations of Christian Moeller and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,” Machines and Machinations, Romance Studies Graduate Conference, Cornell University, September 2009
“From Introspection to Convivial Participation: Departures from Black Box Topology in Contemporary Art Display,” Ways of Watching, Northeast Historic Film Symposium, Bucksport, Maine, July 2009
“Posthuman Rhizomatic Networks in the Works of Christian Moeller and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,” Art/Photography/Media Summer School, University of Zurich, June 2009
"Mapping World Connections: Site-Specificity as a Mode of Placemaking in the Works of Andy Goldsworthy and Olafur Eliasson," Graduate Student Symposium, Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas, April 2009
"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
Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship, 2009-2010
Friends of the Frick Fine Arts and Wilkinson Travel Grant, summer 2009
Marstine Family Foundation Grant, summer 2009Friends of Frick Fine Arts Travel Grant, summer 2008
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
Selected Professional Experience
Instructor, Introduction to Western Architecture, summer 2009
Instructor, Introduction to World Art, spring 2009
Recitation Instructor, Introduction to Modern Art, fall 2008
Instructor, Introduction to Western Architecture, summer 2008
Docent Instructor, Life on Mars, the 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, spring 2008
Research Aide, Life on Mars, the 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, 2007-2008
Research Assistant for Prof. Terry Smith, University of Pittsburgh, 2007-2008
Stand-in Course Instructor, Introduction to Contemporary Art, November-December 2007
Instructor, Introduction to World Art, summer 2007
Intern, Contemporary Art Division and the Education Division, Carnegie Museum of Art, summer 2007
Recitation Instructor, Introduction to Contemporary Art, spring 2007
Recitation Instructor, Introduction to Western Architecture, fall 2006
Intern, Contemporary Art Division, Carnegie Museum of Art, summer 2006