Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán: Black Seas—Scores for the Sonic Eye

Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán will represent Romania at the 2026 Venice Biennale 2026 with Black Seas—Scores for the Sonic Eye, curated by Corina Oprea and Diana Marincu. The exhibition unfolds as a polyphonic installation of visual, sonic, and sculptural elements.

The pavilion is structured around the understanding of the Black Sea as a plural, networked hydroscape, shaped by the rivers that flow into it, carrying Europe’s intertwined colonial and political histories. These currents extend toward the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, situating the Sea within broader systems of circulation, migration, and exchange that historically connected it to Venice, as well as to routes between Asia and Europe. Within this field, movements of water, ecological processes, geopolitical histories, and more-than-human forces intersect, forming a space that is at once historical and living, local and transregional. Seen through this lens, the artists claim that “there is no singular Black Sea, but a field of interdependent forces shaping one another.”

On the surface, the Black Sea is structured by geopolitical boundaries and regimes of control, while its depths conceal an anoxic layer—akin to museum conservation chambers—that hosts a mysterious world guided by its own rules. Here, the absence of oxygen slows biological degradation almost completely and thus halts the passage of time. Under conditions of pollution or environmental stress, organisms submerged in the sea’s anoxic sediments can enter dormant states and remain embedded in the seabed until conditions become favorable again, when they effectively re-enter the present through practices of ecological resurrection. As Benera and Estefán note, “For us, the revival of organisms studied through resurrection ecology is not only a scientific process, but also an epistemological one—a way of understanding the future by traveling back in time.”

Within this dynamic condition, the Black Sea endures a constant turbulence. Its unrest is not only meteorological and sedimentary, but historical and political; it is shaped by ongoing regional tensions that persist beneath the surface and latencies that are perpetually at risk of return. This turbulence is visible through the movement of waves, but it also manifests in the form of conflicts, energy infrastructures, and relations of power. “How to mend a broken sea?” becomes a guiding question within the exhibition. Rather than positioning the Sea as a backdrop, the exhibition proposes it as an active presence, capable of both response and refusal. The concept of the “sonic eye” frames listening as a way of seeing, allowing space to be perceived and navigated through sound.

The project extends beyond the pavilion into the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research, where it gestures toward other water bodies, connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and beyond through overlapping material and infrastructural histories.

Black Seas—Scores for the Sonic Eye continues Anca Benera and Arnold Estefán’s long-term engagement with ecology and environmental politics. Working collaboratively since 2012, they have developed projects attentive to how military imagination, ecological transformation, and resource politics materialize across landscapes, climates, and communities. Their work has been shown internationally at major museums, biennials, and exhibition spaces, including Manifesta 15; the 13th Istanbul Biennial; Kyiv Biennale; Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara; Museum Tinguely, Basel; mumok Vienna; n.b.k. Berlin; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and, Migros Museum, Zürich.

Corina Oprea is a curator, editor, and researcher. Currently IASPIS Guest Curator, former Managing Editor of L’Internationale Online, and, Artistic Director of Konsthall C, she received her PhD from Loughborough University (UK). With a focus on decolonial methodologies and performance-based practices, she is the co-editor of Climate: Our Right to Breathe (K. Verlag, 2022).

Diana Marincu is a curator, art critic, and the Artistic Director of the Art Encounters Foundation in Timișoara. Her work focuses on the visual and narrative strategies of image-construction and the posthuman turn in contemporary art. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Art and Design in Bucharest, where her research focused on curatorial discourses of identity construction in global, regional, and national exhibitions. 

Commissioner: Ioana Ciocan

The accompanying catalogue will be produced by Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) and distributed through Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König

Press kit
For more information, please visit the press kit: blackseas.ro/press 

Press inquiries: press@blackseas.ro

Organisers: Ministry of Culture, Romanian Cultural Institute, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Strategic Partner: UniCredit Bank
Producers: Art Encounters Foundation, FIR Cultural Association
Institutional partners: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), ERSTE Foundation, The Center for Projects Timișoara
Collaborators: EIDOTECH, “Mihai Eminescu” National Theatre in Timișoara, Faculty of Arts and Design in Timișoara / West University of Timișoara, Faculty of Architecture and City Planning / Politehnica University Timișoara, Artwill Bucharest 
Scientific Partners: The National Institute for Research and Development on Marine Geology and Geo-Ecology (GeoEcoMar), Emil Racoviță Speleology Institute (ISER) & Underwater and Speleological Explorations Group (GESS).