The all-women exhibition is part of our March celebration of feminine creativity
About the Event
The Brâncuși Gallery at the Romanian Cultural Institute is pleased to present “Duae Lingua”, a group exhibition exploring the complexities of migration and dual identity through the experiences of Eastern European women navigating the tensions between tradition and assimilation. Featuring works by Adina Andrus (Romania), Katya Grokhovsky (Ukraine), Elena Kalkova (Russia), Lilian Shtereva (Bulgaria), and Alex Wolkowicz (Germany/Poland), the exhibition invites reflection on the ever-evolving process of self-translation.
Curated by Romanian-born Daniela Holban, "Duae Lingua" takes its name from the feminine translation of the Latin phrase “Two Languages” (Duae Linguae). The exhibition deliberately alters the phrase, playfully referencing the popular language-learning app, DuoLingo, while underscoring how meaning can shift—or get lost—in translation. While the app promises rapid fluency through gamification, the exhibition challenges this notion, highlighting the profound and often lifelong process of cultural assimilation. More than mastering vocabulary and syntax, true fluency requires navigating new customs, idioms, and social codes—an experience deeply intertwined with migration.
Through themes of memory, language, and cultural belonging, the exhibition examines the liminal space between two worlds—the contradictions of selfhood and the challenges of translating one’s identity across cultures. Grounded in Holban’s personal reflections on immigrating to the United States as a teenager, Duae Lingua weaves intimate anecdotes with broader cultural narratives. It considers questions such as: Can one ever fully assimilate into another culture when their own heritage remains the foundation of their being? How do memory, ancestry, and experience shape the landscapes within us? Do dual identities blend into something new, or do they remain in perpetual negotiation between past and present?
Through a range of artistic media, Duae Lingua offers a meditation on the spaces between fluency and belonging, self and other, tradition and transformation.
March 7, 2025 - May 30, 2025
Exhibition Opening | 6:00 - 9:00 PM
Artist Talk | 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Exhibition Reception | 7:30 - 9:00 PM
BRÂNCUṢI GALLERY
Romanian Cultural Institute
200 East 38th Street, New York City, NY 10016
Gallery Hours: 9 AM - 5 PM, Monday-Friday
Meet the Curator
DANIELA HOLBAN (b. 1985, Bucharest, Romania) is a Romanian curator, cultural strategist, and nonprofit executive dedicated to public programming, artist development, and site-specific art initiatives that foster action-driven communities. Her curatorial practice explores themes of self-reflection, identity, multipolarity, and sustainability. Holban’s exhibition series "REPOPULATIONS" (2019 & 2022) was supported by the Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Grant. She plays a key role in organizing We Are Nature, a summer art series at NOoSPHERE Arts promoting systems thinking and environmental awareness and oversees the Broadway Stages @ Kingsland Wildflowers Residency Award, curating an annual site-specific art installation. Named one of Brooklyn Magazine’s 50 Most Fascinating People of 2023, Holban is the Deputy Director at NOoSPHERE Arts and a Mentor at NEW INC, an incubator for practitioners working at the intersection of art, design, and technology. She has previously held roles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MANA Contemporary, {CTS} Creative Thriftshop, William Bennet Gallery, The Ear Classical, and The Fashion and Textile Museum in London. Her extensive network includes collaborations with The High Line, NADA, NARS Foundation, CalArts, BRIC, The Brooklyn Rail, ILAP, CreateART, gener8tor Art, Brooklyn Arts Council, Paradice Palase, Broadway Stages, Newtown Creek Alliance, Kingsland Wildflowers, Showfields, and Moleskine. Holban co-founded ARTFARE INC. (2019–2023), serving as Senior Curator. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Photo by Paula Andrea from the "Quoted Magazine"
Meet the Artists
ADINA ANDRUS (b. Bucharest, Romania) is a New York-based artist working across sculpture, drawing, and installation to investigate memory, belonging, and visual culture across time and space. Her practice engages with a shared reservoir of inherited images and symbols, reinterpreting them to generate new meanings. Andrus’ work has been exhibited in the United States and Romania at venues including the Ely Center for Contemporary Art, CollarWorks, LABSpace Gallery, and Make a Point Gallery. She is a recipient of the Queens Council for the Arts New Work Grant and the NY State Arts Alive Artist Grant. Andrus studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Art Students League in New York. Her series Some Things to Remember explores intentional memory-keeping in the context of migration and the search for belonging, transforming sensory recollections—such as the taste of a childhood dessert or the scent of a distant home—into sculptural vessels that reclaim and reframe the past.
KATYA GROKHOVSKY is a Ukrainian-born, New York City-based artist, educator, and the Founding Director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial. Grokhovsky works across installation, sculpture, video, fiber, painting, drawing and performance to explore themes of migration, displacement, identity, body, and gender. As a Ukrainian immigrant, her work draws from autobiographical experiences, intertwining personal and political narratives to examine stereotypes, oppression, and the absurd in the everyday. Employing extensive research and diverse materials with symbolic potential, she creates tactile, multidisciplinary works that bridge personal and generational histories, fostering empathy and dialogue. Her practice critically addresses communal pain, historical amnesia, and power dynamics, offering restorative spaces that amplify often silenced voices while emphasizing resilience, fluid identity, and humanity. Grokhovsky has been awarded numerous artist residencies, including the Padnos Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), MI, the Windgate Artist-in-Residence at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, The California Studio: Manetti Shrem Visiting Artist-in-Residence at UC Davis, the Ekard Artist-in-Residence at Bucknell University, PA, Sculpture Space, EFA Studio Program, SVA Art Practice AIR, Pratt Fine Arts AIR, Museum of Arts and Design AIR, BRICworkspace, Ox-Bow School of Art, Wassaic Project, Santa Fe Art Institute, Watermill Center, and more. Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships such as the Brooklyn Arts Council Grants, FST StudioProjects Fund, and the New American Fellowship, among others. She has exhibited extensively in museums, galleries, and nonprofit institutions, including the Brooklyn Museum, Ceysson & Bénétière Gallery, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, A.I.R. Gallery Biennial, NADA East Broadway, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Smack Mellon, Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), Queens Museum, Tiger Strikes Asteroid NYC, BRIC Biennial, FLUX Factory, EFA Project Space, Hudson Valley MOCA, and more. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from the Victorian College of the Arts, and a BA in Fashion from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
ELENA KALKOVA (b. 1991, Tver, Russia, lives and works in Newburgh, New York) is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher. In her practice, she explores memory and memorylessness, state propaganda, resistance to the systems of oppression and violence, and complex relationships with home, especially, when the home is a dictatorship. Through her multifaceted practice, she bridges personal and collective experiences, prioritizing coming together for collective repair of fractured social ties, and fostering horizontal connections. Kalkova's written research lies primarily in the field of Post-Soviet feminist and queer art and translation. Kalkova is interested in conversations around what is brought with you to a new place, what is forgotten and what is pushed out or erased for those who are stuck in this liminal space of non/be/longing. She is trying to talk about fragile permanence and abiding intangibility. Her works are intimate memorials that seek to monumentalize intangible and non-monumental.
LILIAN SHTEREVA (b. 1994, Haskovo, Bulgaria) is a Bulgarian artist whose practice reimagines communal traditions through site-specific gatherings inspired by the folkloric sedenkya—spaces where craft, storytelling, and social rituals intertwine. Her work explores themes of connection, craft, and the intersection of labor and play. Shtereva has exhibited at Morgan Lehman Gallery (NYC), Sofia Art Fair (Bulgaria), and The Immigrant Artist Biennial (NYC). She has been an artist-in-residence at IATRUS (Bulgaria), Winslow House (CA), and Noce Fresca (Italy). A recipient of the Artists + Activist Grant (2020) and the Define American Immigrant Artist Fellowship (2019), her work has been featured in Виж! Magazine Bulgaria and Humana Obscura. Shtereva is currently pursuing a BFA in Studio Art at Hunter College, NYC.
ALEX WOLKOWICZ (b. 1978, Germany) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working with images, sculptural objects, and sound. Her staged installations explore materiality and narrative, often engaging in dialogue with the viewer and the surrounding space. Wolkowicz has participated in residencies at Elsewhere Artist Collaborative (NC), Flux Factory (NY), and PADA Studios (Portugal), among others. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Kosmetiksalon Babette (Berlin), Every Woman Biennial (NYC), and 3+1 Arte Contemporânea (Lisbon). She has collaborated with sound artists Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and Tsantsa and co-founded Cave Collective, a multidisciplinary art and design practice. Wolkowicz’s practice investigates the interplay of body, gender, memory, and emotion, often incorporating performance and site-specific elements to challenge perceptions of agency and vulnerability.