- documenta archiv
As we do every year, we are pleased to introduce the current Goethe Fellows at the documenta archiv: two artists and researchers will be enriching the team in the coming months and pursuing their own transdisciplinary projects.
In her interdisciplinary work, Alexandra Zidariu (Sibiu, Romania) combines theoretical reflection with artistic practice. She studied at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu, at HAWK Hildesheim, and at the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art, where she was a master’s student under Prof. Nanne Meyer. At the heart of her practice is drawing as a method and medium of processual thinking. Influenced by philosophy and scientific models of linguistic theory, she explores phenomena of seriality and repetition, opening up spaces in which meanings shift fluidly through the interplay of observation and context. She understands interpretation as an open, collaborative process. Zidariu’s works have been exhibited internationally, most recently in the Romanian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.
As part of her Goethe Fellowship at the documenta archiv, Zidariu is examining, through selected case studies, infrastructural forms of labor in the context of documenta as well as their preservation in the archive. The working title “Peripheral Labor Between Visibility and Omission” indicates the focus of her project: at its core are the construction of authorship and the question of an “archive behind the archive.” Her artistic research focuses on the often collaborative fields of work that contribute to the success and reception of an exhibition. Questions regarding the concrete organization of this work often remain hidden within the archival materials. Zidariu employs drawing as an artistic-research method through which processes of institutional memory, attribution, and omission can be examined and made visible.
