SAVA Creative Fellows: Benera + Estefán

We are delighted to announce artists Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán as SAVA Creative Fellows at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies. They are based in Bucharest and Vienna and have collaborated since 2012. Their research-driven practice examines hidden patterns in historical, social, and geopolitical narratives through installation, video, and performance. Their works have been exhibited worldwide, recently including n.b.k Berlin, Tinguely Museum Basel, Migros Museum Zurich, Istanbul Biennial, Palais de Tokyo Paris, and Whitechapel Gallery, among others.

Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) is the first interdisciplinary research project to put forward the Socialist Anthropocene as a new field of study within the critical corpus concerned with challenging and decentring the West-centric discourses of the Anthropocene, asserting the constitutive role of the twentieth century environmental histories of Socialism in the formation of the new geological age. The project begins with the first of five thematic streams: the socialist praxis of extractivism.  

Titled ‘Prospecting S.A.’, Benera and Estefán’s research explores the overshadowed Romanian-African joint economic ventures and their legacies. They investigate the extractivist politics pursued by Socialist Romania in newly independent African countries, as Romania set up companies with the right to exploit energy and mineral deposits and gained advantageous ocean fishing licenses in exchange for investments in transport infrastructure, arms, and free education. They are interested in the significant role played by intelligence services in the economical and geopolitical influence of socialist states in Africa. They put forward questions concerning legacy of such relations: How is economic espionage camouflaged and to what extent do some of those activities persist today? 

To find out more about SAVA, please visit: Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts | Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) - UCL – University College London

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Images: SAVA Creative Fellows: Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán (photographer: Viktoria Tomaschko). A collage made by Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán. An archive image provided by Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán.