Clio Art Fair Spotlight: A review by Oana Știrbu

Artist Oana Știrbu in her studio (Photo by Cosmin Grădinaru)

Oana Știrbu develops responsive material systems that investigate how perception shifts through time, presence and spatial reconfiguration. Her practice creates sensory environments where matter becomes a site for examining traces left by emotional and ecological rupture, and for probing what remains hidden in representation. This line of inquiry extends a background in the study of perception and interior states into material form, and it proceeds from a conviction: the damage a culture does to itself and the damage it does to the natural world are the same gesture at different scales, legible in matter before it is legible in language.

She works across art installation, painting and time-based organic processes, she employs texture, weight, sound and movement as a vocabulary in their own right. Mirrors, sound-responsive surfaces, organic substances and crystallization function as perceptual devices that destabilize fixed relationships between body, time, space and image.

Her materials are chosen for what they already carry: the residue of unconscious use, the trace of a barrier that gave way, the surrogate for skin. What was discarded becomes the substance of the work, bound through recipes of her own devising.

Her method emerges from a Dharma art principle: work that does not begin with an idea of what it should become, but with attention to what is becoming in this moment. Matter is allowed to complete itself. Her installations often activate through touch, reflection or bodily movement, allowing materials to change behavior in real time. Running parallel to these interactive environments, her time-based works employ coffee grounds, algae, eggshells, plants or mineral growth to explore transformation, decay and slow material evolution.

Across all media, Știrbu’s practice focuses on how environments respond to presence and how material systems reshape chronological and spatial awareness. Rather than producing fixed objects, her work constructs conditions in which perception becomes unstable, relational and continuously evolving, always asking what happens when the material refuses to hold still, when the surface watches back, changes under your touch, or quietly becomes something else in the days after.

Oana Știrbu exhibited her work in the past at the 22nd edition of Clio Art Fair, held from May 7-10, 2026. Here is a short interview with the artist and a review of her experience at the fair.

Oana, can you please describe your art in four words?

Environments of transforming matter.

What inspires your art?

How perception shifts through time and presence. I'm inspired by what a material reveals when it refuses to hold still, when a surface changes under a touch or becomes something else through sound. That instability is where perception opens up.

How would you describe your experience at Clio Art Fair?

My experience at Clio Art Fair was wonderful! The location in Chelsea is extremely beautiful, right in the heart of the Manhattan gallery scene, and the gallery assistants were incredibly friendly, helpful, and professional throughout! Alessandro was flexible and genuinely open to experimentation, including with my sound-based works, which meant a lot to me. And the fellow artists I met were warm and generous, they made the whole experience brighter. It was a real pleasure to be part of it, and I hope I will come back soon!

Oana Știrbu, Hummingbird Lullaby, 2024

Mixed media, 48" × 36" × 2"  Showcased at Clio Art Fair's 22nd Edition, May 7-10, 2026