OM - Body & Space Residencies - June 2025
In June 2025, artists Oana Mureșan and Iulia-Oana Toacaci participated in a residency at L'Abri - Genève. The residency is part of the OM - Body and Space program, which includes five residencies with artists from Romania, France, and Switzerland, taking place from May to October 2025.
On June 24, at 3:00 PM, a public lecture and discussion with the two artists was held in Studio 3 at L'Abri - Genève. Choreographer Oana Mureșan and visual artist Iulia-Oana Toacaci presented the results of their artistic research conducted during the residency at L'Abri - Genève.
The choreographer Oana Mureșan and the visual artist Iulia-Oana Toacaci have presented the outcomes of their artistic research conducted during their residency at l’Abri, Geneva.
During the event, the artists have introduced their collaborative project, Spatial Vortex, and reflected on their creative process and conceptual framework. The presentation has touched upon key themes such as: meeting space, distance and proximity, time, axis lines and movement in accord with speed and repetition.
This encounter offered an opportunity to gain insight into an interdisciplinary dialogue between movement and visual language, as well as the theoretical and intuitive processes that inform the work.
„Investigating the meeting space in a vortex led us to questions of proximity and approximation. Proximity because at least two entities/curents//bodies/consciousnesses need to enter into a proximal space. Approximation because whatever takes shape within and between these entities/bodies/consciousnesses can only be an approximation at any particular moment in time. A precise shape of the space of the encounter can only be outlined as the event of the encounter has already acquired memory as such the proposal for the aesthetic dimension of the spatial vortex imagined as an “emptiness full of possibilities” is a layering of fragments. The relationship that arises between these fragments but also in the empty space that holds them and makes their existence possible/visible gives rise to multiple configurations (possibilities) of reflection and refraction.”
Oana Mureșan, choreographer & Iulia-Oana Toacaci, visual artist
The residency is part of the program OM – Body & Space. This cultural project is co-financed by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The project does not necessarily represent the official position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN shall not be held liable for the project's content or any use to which the project outcome might be put. These are the sole responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.
Oana Mureșan
Since the age of 5, Oana has been working with the body and its intelligence. Initially as a gymnast, which was her first passion, she pursued professional studies before turning to the performing arts. She graduated from the "Gheorghe Dima" Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca with a bachelor's degree in choreography and later completed a master's program in choreographic direction.
From 2016 to the present, she has created choreography for various dance performances, both individual and group, held in conventional spaces, museums, and art galleries. Oana collaborates as a dancer and choreographer with various associations and institutions dedicated to dance and visual arts, both in Romania and on the international stage.
In 2018, during the FITIC theater festival in Constanța, she won the award for Best Choreographer with the performance "Heterochromia," marking her debut as a choreographer.
In 2020, the National Dance Center in Bucharest awarded her for her contribution to the construction of contemporary dance in Romania.
In 2022, she opened OM, the first independent choreographic center in Cluj-Napoca dedicated to contemporary dance and contemporary choreographic research.
In 2024, she initiated the OM - Transylvania International Dance Festival, a first edition that highlights contemporary dance and its interconnection with various forms of art and cultures.
Alongside her artistic projects, she regularly holds contemporary dance classes and workshops for adults and children.
Iulia Toacaci
Iulia Oana Toacaci (*1982) is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Berlin, working across various media to map transitional states. In her movements between nations, time zones, cultural landscapes, customs, and languages, her sense of belonging has lost its borders.
Belonging belongs to transition. Her creative practice explores seemingly contradictory concepts of presence and absence, otherness and belonging, location and dislocation. These concepts are examined not in opposition but in relation to each other, focusing on connective distance and the movements between them.
Iulia graduated from the painting department of the University of Art and Design in Cluj and completed her master's degree at the same university with a dissertation and an artistic project titled Conceptual Interventions in Migratory Forms.
She is currently a doctoral student at the Doctoral School of the University of Art and Design in Cluj, researching the form and sociocultural context of transculturality in contemporary art after 1989.
