The links between art and the garden
with Delia Popa in Crețești Studio-Garden
Saturday, 26 July 2025
Hours: 14:00 – 21:00
Crețești village, Vidra commune, Ilfov county
From spring to autumn, four different gardens located in close proximity to Bucharest engage in an exchange of practices and experiences in cultivating and relating as part of the project Cultivators of Life. Starting with a spring session of exchanging seeds and documenting the sowing and growing processes, in summer and autumn each gardener opens their space to a public, invited to observe, learn and engage with the knowledge of plants and their network of relationality. Each event is choreographed following the gardens’ particular conditions and contexts, as well as each gardener’s own sensibility, expertise and experiences. The process and events are documented by three young harvesters through different media: writing (Irina Bobei), illustration (Maria Doni), and video (Gabriela Cozma.
The second event brings us together to the garden-studio of artist Delia Popa, located in Crețești village, Vidra commune. Used as a space for work and conceptualization, experimentation and interrogation of the existing links between artistic practice and gardening, Crețești Studio Garden is a place where the vegetable greenhouses, mixed herbs and the shrubbery in the garden, together with paper works in pencil and ink, video or objects produced in the studio, become part of the same endeavor to situate an artistic practice in the context of the topography of the village and to research the relationship between ecological awareness, gentrification and cultivating practices. The itinerary starts with a short visit at the artist’s solo exhibition „Place of action – Crețești” at Anca Poterașu Gallery (26, Popa Soare Str.) and next to the studio-garden in Crețești where participants will visit a few objectives that make the subject of the artist’s works (the bridge, the neighbor’s house and permaculture garden, the greenhouses in the village), followed by a presentation of the studio-garden, group discussions, a video screening, a planting session of shrubs, and a collective dinner.
“I used to come to Crețești when I was a child, together with my parents and sister. We drove from Bucharest once in two weeks, when the cars with even numbers could circulate. It was a world that allured me, even though it was tougher than mine. For Easter they would cut a lamb and for Christmas a pig (which as kinds we had to ride in a ritualistic manner!), our grandparents spoke to us bluntly (“may you catch a plague” my grandmother used to yell at us when we misbehaved, an expression that eventually amused us), we saw how hard they worked, how they prepared the tomatoes and gladioli to go to the market at four in the morning, we sometimes helped them in different jobs like picking the black grapes for wine, playing in the corn field and mainly building magical memories.
Then the yard and the garden in Crețești became the place which reminded us of our father—our connection to Crețești—who died in the year 1990. At Crețești I learned about the rituals of remembrance-burial, memorial service, death watch for grandparents and other relatives. I learned what good and bad neighboring means and I began making artworks in and about this place. In 1991 I became a vegetarian and since then I tried to “navigate” my relation to this place, although some of the local customs, like rising animals for meat are very hard for me to accept. Since 2015 I started to build a studio place here in the former shed-garage of my grandparents, and in the years 2020-22 I lived here. Since then, I have been cultivating vegetables in the two greenhouses that belonged to my grandparents, especially in the weekends when I can dedicate myself entirely to this place and I see more and more the links between art and gardening.” – Delia Popa
Delia Popa works with mediums such as painting, video, installation, performance and participatory projects. Her current research focuses on the representation of the rural landscape and local topography in relation to ecological awareness, gentrification and agriculture. She is also active as an art pedagogue and mediator and contributes to the development of life skills and visual thinking skills among children and young people. Since 2013, she has been leading ArtCrowd-Artists in education, an art education association and since 2024, she has been part, alongside Nita Mocanu, of the artistic duo ART ROSA.
The event is part of the program Cultivators of Life, a multianual project organized by Tranzit.ro/Bucharest Association and co-financed by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The program continues and supports the activities started in 2021 at the Experimental Research Station for Research on Art and Life in Siliștea Snagovului, focused on conserving biodiversity, testing ecological prototypes, and rethinking the relationship between soils, materials and artistic production. Curated by Adelina Luft, the program proposes the study and formulation of a new lexicon and practices related to an emerging relationship between indigenous/ancestral knowledge, land cultivation and natural sciences, realized through a series of artistic residencies, open events in gardens around Bucharest, applied workshops, conferences with indigenous thinkers and a final group in 2026 at MODEM – Center for Modern and Contemporary Art in Debrecen.
The program does not necessarily represent the official position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN shall not be held liable for the program's content or any use to which the program outcome might be put. These are the sole responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.
