”Agir dans son lieu is a collective research and conversation project designed to make visible a set of choices that have major repercussions within the living world. To make visible those who act in their place as best they can. The works manifest the ways in which all bodies (human and more-than-human) are heavily affected by a system governed by the law of exploitation. ”
Ioana Cîrlig, Morgane Denzler, Andreea Medar, Aurelia Mihai, Ilie Mihali, Ileana Mihali, Delia Popa, Maria Poterașu, Damien Rouxel
Curated by Julie Crenn
27 February – 28 March, 2026
Anca Poterașu Gallery, Bucharest
Over two weeks in July 2025, a group of artists (Morgane Denzler, Damien Rouxel, Delia Popa, Ioana Cirlig, Andreea Medar and Ilie Mihali) reactivated the project in Săcel (Maramureș, Romania) at the invitation of Anca Poterașu (ARAC). A collective time of thought, encounters, plastic experiments, discussions and questioning about the agricultural realities of our place. We are aware of the extreme fragility of these agricultural realities. Practices are based on family subsistence. This blatant fragility contrasts with the intensity of the interdependence between faith, rurality, crafts (ceramics, weaving and embroidery in particular), traditions, animals, the river and the forest.
At Săcel, everything in daily life and in its own ecosystem (visible and invisible, human and more-than-human), is connected. Thus, Morgane Denzler continued her reflections on sheep farming, wool and the relationship between shepherd, flock and place. Damien Rouxel sought to merge personal issues with observations made in Maramureș about traditions and material realities.
“Farming without a farmer is not just a problem of the countryside becoming decertified; it’s also a matter of the disappearance of a profession and, with that profession, of the body of knowledge and know-how that founded the fundamental link to the living world that peasants and farmers have held in trust for millennia, on behalf of society as a whole.”
Ilie Mihali devoted his time to working with earth and fire to create ceramic works. Ioana Cirlig has immersed herself in the vegetal dimension of Săcel. Delia Popa thought up links between her place (Crețești, Vidra region) and Săcel, two vulnerable villages. Andreea Medar continued her research into a disappearing memory. In Săcel, she became aware of the disappearance of pastoral customs and collaborated with a potter and a singer to revive a gestural and musical memory.
