”Back Stages” unthreads the legacy of the artist Irène Codreano (1896-1985), navigating through the traces of ‘herstory’, to reflect how art exists in an embedded relation to the systems that surround it. Moving across the halls of museums, the corridors of archives, the silent shelves of libraries, as well as the former artist studios in Bucharest and Paris, Mirela Baciak, Sophie Thun, and Aurora Király engaged in this trans-contextual research project to seek kinship across time.

The exhibition is a deeply collaborative and somewhat speculative endeavor to forge a connection with Irène Codréano, whilst casting a contemplative glance at the institutional spaces where art is archived, stored or displayed, and explore the nuanced nexus between the acts of access, protection, and care.

The collaboration with MNAR – the National Art Museum of Romania, home to an invaluable collection of Codréano's sculptures, the research trip to Paris to visit the Brancusi Archives at Bibliotheque Kandinsky in Centre Pompidou and documentation at the Barbu Brezianu Archives at the Institute of Art History "G. Oprescu" in Bucharest were invaluable to the development of the project.

Back Stages is organised by the Romanian Association of Contemporary Art (ARAC) and is a project co-funded by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, Phileas and the Austrian Cultural Forum.