A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Irina Bucan, an adult person with a fair skin tone and a black skullet, climbing a fire escape.

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Irina Botea Bucan

Assistant Professor, Adjunct

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Bio

Education: BSc, Geology and Geophysics, Bucharest University, 1995; BFA and MFA, Arts, Bucharest University of Arts, 2002; MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2006; PhD, Arts, Goldsmiths University of London 2025.

Irina Botea Bucan (b. Ploiesti, Romania) (she/they) has developed a symbiotic artist-educator-gardener-researcher methodological framework that consistently questions dominant socio-political ideas and centralizes human and non-human agency as a vehicle for meaning. Her multidisciplinary practice includes many different entangled mediums and roles: filmmaker, installation artist (textiles/embroidery/sound) writer, curator, cultural manager, educator, and gardener. These activities are initiated in equally diverse contexts, such as: academic institutions, alternative galleries, museums, art biennials, film festivals, gardens, community centres, and cultural houses. In 2013 she co-created the residency-research place Casa Radesti in rural Romania together with Jon Dean. In the past three years she has initiated and managed transdisciplinary cultural projects designed to reactivate community-based spaces such as the Cultural Hearth in Fundata, located in the highest permanently inhabited village in Romania.

Irina is currently finishing a PhD at Goldsmiths (University of London), titled “Unfinishing Cultural Houses”; wherein she addresses the de-centralization of cultural discourses and the possibility of sustaining creative differentiation within spaces where the community gathers to negotiate and create what we may still call culture.

Her films, videos and installations have been exhibited in places like the Venice Biennial; Pompidou Centre; Jeu de Paume; Rotterdam Film Festival; New Museum, NY; MUSAC; Gwangju Biennial; MNAC Bucharest; Loop Barcelona; ZKM; EMAF; Reina Sofia; La Casa Encendida; EXIS Korea; La Kunsthalle, Mulhouse; Centre of Contemporary Art, Torun; Mystertskyi Arsenal, Kiev; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw; Frankfurter Kunstverein; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Centre Photographique, D’Ile-de-France; Argos Centre for Art and Media, Brussels; U-turn Quadrienale, Copenhagen; Kunst-Werken, Berlin; HMKV Halle, Dortmund; Videobrasil, Sao Paolo; Kunstforum, Vienna.

She was invited as a visiting artist at: Zurich University of Arts, CNDB (National Centre for Contemporary Dance, Bucharest); Georgetown University of Arts, Washington DC; University College of London, Centre for South-East European Studies; Ecole supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg; Ecole Nationale Supérieure D’architecture de Strasbourg; DePaul University, Chicago; UIC, Chicago, Bilgi University, Istanbul; Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam; European Academy of Participation, Amsterdam; Columbia University, Harriman Institute NY; George Enescu University of Art, Iasj; Babes Boyali University, Cluj; University of Sussex, UK.

Awards

In 2015, Irina's show It is Now A Matter of Learning Hope at ThreeWalls Gallery in Chicago was nominated by AICA USA for the best new media show in the US. In 2014, she received the "3Arts Visual Artist Chandler Award." As a filmmaker, she was awarded the "Impakt Film Festival Silver Award," and was featured in the Rotterdam Film Festival as the Short Special artist in 2015. She was also awarded numerous residencies and fellowships, including AHRC (Chase Arts and Council fellowship in UK); International Residence at Recollets, Paris; NTU CCA (Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Arts), Singapore; AAUW (American Association for University Woman); Kultur Kontakt, Vienna Fellowship; Institute for Advanced Study at CEU Fellowship, Hungary.

Publications

Irina has published widely, selected texts include: L'internationale Online; Goldsmiths Almanac (University of London); Chronic Desire (Idea, Romania); Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (MIT Press); Studia Dramatica: Reinstalling Culture as Common Good and Public Service (Babes-Bolyai University); City Methodologies, Before a National Anthem (Jeu de Paume, Paris); Playground Revolutions (ICR Stockholm); European Academy of Participation (Goethe, Avinus Academia), and Gagarin 28 (Journal of Artists' Writings, Antwerp).

Her work has been reviewed in Art Margins, Art 21 Magazine, Art Review, Idea Magazine, Arta Magazine, Flash Art, MIT: Thresholds 41, Balkon, and Zout in de Wond: Kunstenaars in Europa (Juriaan Benschop).

She is currently editing a book on delivering creative methodologies inside cultural houses (2025).

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This seminar consists of weekly studio visits, discussions, and small group critiques. Students are expected to arrive with completed and semi-completed works and be prepared to make and re-make new works throughout the summer sessions. A wide variety of readings chosen by faculty will guide discussions that concentrate on problems concerning methods of artmaking, distribution, and interpretation. Readings will include examples drawn from the emerging category of conceptual writing as well as crucial art historical texts, literature, and poetry.

Class Number

1236

Credits

3

Description

Over the course of each six-week summer residency period, all students in the Low- Res MFA program engage with a series of world renowned artists and scholars to expand our collective conceptual frameworks and discourses. Invited speakers participate in our Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series. They deliver a public lecture open to the entire SAIC and Chicago community and the general public, and then participate in a Colloquium the next day exclusively for Low-Res MFA students. Each Colloquium takes place with the artist present, and is a space where the artist¿s work and concepts (direct or adjacent) are discussed, questions are raised, and topics are debated. Colloquium asks for consensus, but rather a dynamic and in depth discursive exploration of ideas. This form allows for a multiplicity of voices to build on concepts through questioning, contributing, challenging, and listening to each other. The colloquium is considered a Gift anchored with the presence of the visiting artist. This Gift is generated by enacting full attention to the concepts present in the artist or scholar¿s work. In the spirit of Lewis Hyde, the Gift is an exchange which generates or propagates further attention and exchange in culture. Thus, the Colloquium is a Gift meant to propagate further exchange in the world, as artists and citizens.

Class Number

1317

Credits

1.5

Description

Students in their final residency enroll in Thesis Studio: Public Presentation, a two-part course that guides students through their thesis presentation that will be given in the SAIC Galleries during the MFA Thesis Exhibition. The first portion functions as a seminar, during which students learn about historical modes and forms of the artist¿s talk and prepare for their own public presentations. These presentations consist of two parts: an artist talk to be delivered live in relation to the Thesis Exhibition, and a creative video work that synthesizes ideas in each artist¿s practice in a new way. The second portion of the course consists of presenting the talks and videos to the entire graduating cohort and SAIC faculty.

Class Number

1239

Credits

3