You explore different themes through your work (truth, form, human connection, identity, and social atmosphere). What is the tether between all these themes in your images? What makes them distinct?

I use such themes as guides; what tethers them is intention and mutual collaboration. I usually tend to commit to long-term projects and the distinction consists in who I am - as an entry point - and who I leave as once the project reaches the questions (not answers) I was looking for.

How do you explore these themes specifically within the world of women?

It’s a form of reckoning with my own identity, where I am coming from, who I am and who I want to become. I became interested in identity politics from a very young age and started to understand its nuances since moving to study and work abroad. I remember always being struck by attitudes to, and connotations about different cultures, particularly regarding women, as I became more exposed to it as ‘the other’ from Eastern Europe – a Romanian immigrant. I noticed how different it was to the realities I knew and experienced as a woman myself. Myself, my country and my culture were being perceived in stereotypical fractions, whilst missing out a more thoughtfully informed, multi-layered picture of who we actually are. Through my visual work, I further studied socio-political realities of other states and non-states to find out how women stood out, historically and socially, and how they are shaping an alternative vision of womanhood as well as influencing change. No matter who we are, where we are from, or our circumstances in life, we all want to be exploring our options, futures, identities through a personal filter. The point of difference is what the women around the world have to endure and risk for their freedom. The question is how to create meaningful solidarity. My interest consists in imagining, protecting and co-creating radical, intersectional feminist futures.

What makes an image transcendent of gender, genre, and context?

More than 5 years ago I wrote my dissertation on the intersection of these subjects, as an intimate quest of my interpretation of the world and personal background. I believe gender is a social construct used as a divider of both the world and the art world into a binary of human experience, which attributes specific representational codes that require both men and women to act, think, and look in a certain way. What was, and still is, of great importance to me is to work past forms of restrictions – to seek visual strategies and to look for routes in which the distinction of the female gaze may work not just as an option but also as a free creative force that challenges the institutionalized art world and the roles women play as agents of change. I believe one of the strengths of photography is its ability to transcend contexts, and not only in terms of what is seen or what evades it, but the expansion of social relations in the systems in which were made and thus transforming this quality into a steady aspect of photography itself. To create and/or understand meaning through photography requires intentionality and it is manifested by a certain responsibility towards what is seen, assumed and acted upon. Telling someone’s story means not only accounting for a fact, but also embodying a visual language from a personal viewpoint. In essence, I refuse the idea that a photograph has impact only when addressed in a specific context, to a specific audience, acting according a specific genre, or seen as women’s art. I want to continue to imagine photography being able to hold its visual and social power, to challenge and change fixed frameworks of thought, to move beyond binary.

Describe your creative process in one word.

Nonlinear.

If you could teach a one-hour class on anything, what would it be?

What a beautiful question. On seeing, embracing curiosity, personal why(s), and how what you care about in this world will guide you. I don’t know if teaching is the right word as these are still parts of my learning process, but I would generously pass the knowledge I have received throughout the years from my mentors.

What was the last book you read or film you saw that inspired you?

It is not the last one I read, but the one that had a profound effect on me during last year and that would be Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta. Film wise, Mustang by Deniz Gamze Erguven. I tend to re-read books I love or see over and over again films I would have loved to direct myself.