Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán

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“Oftentimes, we have had to sustain our artistic practice through additional forms of labor. Since 2012, a mouse-pointer tracker has been recording the hours spent in front of the screen, not making art, but carrying out various freelance jobs. On days dedicated to artistic work, the sheets remain blank. As our artistic activity gradually intensified, more and more sheets stayed empty, until the drawings slowly began to disappear. The choreography of the computer mouse was captured daily and sent by email throughout the duration of each exhibition. The work ceased to exist in 2020.” Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán have developed a collaborative practice since 2011, based between Bucharest and Vienna. Their artistic formation is closely connected to the independent contemporary art scene in Bucharest, particularly through the Centre for Visual Introspection, which they co founded and where they initiated workshops, public art projects and publications between 2008 and 2012. Working across installation, film, sound, performance and sculptural environments, the duo uses research based methods to examine the relations between territory, law, military imagination, ecology and resource politics. Their projects often approach landscape as a political and material archive, shaped by conflict, extraction and institutional narratives. Their work has been presented in major international contexts, including Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the 13th Istanbul Biennial, Kunsthalle Wien, MUMOK, Vienna, the Kyiv Biennial, Whitechapel Gallery, London, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Manifesta 15, Barcelona, and Art Encounters, Timișoara. Recent solo exhibitions include Rehearsals for Peace at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Subnature at Trafó Gallery, Budapest, and UnWorlding at Art Encounters, Timișoara. In 2026, Benera and Estefán represented Romania at La Biennale di Venezia with Black Seas. Scores for the Sonic Eye, a project centred on the Black Sea as an ecological, historical and geopolitical field. Their practice is held in public collections including Kadist, FRAC Pays de la Loire, n.b.k. Video Forum and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest.