Dana Andrei / selma banich
Artists-in-Residence July–August 2025, Romania / Croatia /
© Dana Andrei, Adam Semilajac
Dana Andrei
Dana Andrei moves across various positions within the cultural work spectrum, most often working within collectives and collaborative configurations towards conceiving installations, lectures, exhibitions and publications. Since 2013, she has also collaborated as a duo together with Sorin Popescu, researching subjects such as the surveillance economy, the institutionalization of art, pop culture, ecological thought, and public discourse.
She was part of the editorial board of CORNER, an art publication covering the political dimensions of the sports scene—its research taking shape as the exhibition Realism of the Game—and of IDEA arts + society, a journal of contemporary art and critical theory.
Based in Bucharest, she is a member of the Experimental Research Station for Art and Life, and the “Ecaterina Arbore” Cooperative for Research and Political Action. She is currently in her first year at the DAI Roaming Academy.
STATEMENT
During her residency at MQ, Dana Andrei will investigate the materiality of history by tracing connections between domestic labour, socialist economies, and capitalist transformations. Methodologically, the research draws on archival and literary analysis, interviews, theoretical and visual speculation; reading archives against the grain, her project follows what has been distorted, erased, or silenced, listening closely to the socio-economic contexts and material conditions that shaped experience and perception.
Rejecting claims to objective distance, the project proposes a tactile understanding of history—sensing the residues of labour, exploitation, and the everyday gestures that sustain economic infrastructures.
Planned outcomes include a soundwork and a publication weaving theory, imagery, and historical analysis—contributing to ongoing conversations on labour and gender—as well as a lecture performance that invites expanded perspectives and collective reflection.
selma banich
selma banich (b. 1979, Yugoslavia) is an artist, activist, and community organizer from the Balkans. Their work unfolds at the intersection of art, political action, and transnational solidarity, grounded in anarchist, feminist, and decolonial thought and practice. Rooted in explorative, process-driven, and communal methodologies, selma’s artistic practice is both context-responsive and collaborative—developed with artists, curators, communities, and grassroots movements across geographies. Deeply committed to feminist, anti-fascist, migrant, and workers’ struggles, she actively contributes to local and transnational solidarity initiatives, including Zagreb Solidarity City, Solidarityline Balkans, and For BREAD. selma has received several fellowships and honors.
STATEMENT
During the residency at MQ, I will critically engage with the historical, social, and ecological narratives surrounding indigo dye, expanding on my ongoing research into its complex and violent global legacy. Through experimentation with dyeing, quilting, and tufting techniques, I will investigate the materiality of indigo alongside resistance poetry by feminist and decolonial authors. This interdisciplinary approach allows for a politicized reflection on indigo’s entanglements with colonial extraction, forced labor, and environmental destruction—tracing how these histories persist in the present. The residency offers crucial time and space to develop new tools and methods, enabling a deepened political and artistic inquiry. By connecting with Vienna’s cultural landscape and fellow residents, I aim to build solidarities across contexts and contribute to a shared artistic language of refusal, memory, and repair. The resulting work will center textile as a site of resistance, care, and collective imagination.
External Links
Selma Banich:
https://selmabanich.org