Adina Andrus (born in Bucharest, Romania) works across various media, creating sculptures, drawings and installations that confront questions of memory, belonging, and visual culture across time and space. Her works allude to a universal pool of images and symbols that we inherit, consume and are guided by, while simultaneously contributing new meanings.
Andrus is a recipient of the Queens Council for the Arts New Work Grant and the NY State Arts Alive Artist Grant and has exhibited work in the United States and Romania, including at the Ely Center for Contemporary Art (New Haven, CT), CollarWorks (Troy, NY), LABSpace Gallery (Hillsdale, NY), GoggleWorks Center for the Arts(Reading, PA), and Make a Point Gallery (Bucharest, Romania). She studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA and the Art Students’ League in New York City. Andrus lives and works in the New York area.
Artist Statement
My work describes human systems, networks of beliefs, blood ties and stories that keep communities together. In looking at both small daily habits and momentous rituals, both old and new, I express the commonalities in our lived experiences across history and cultures. Recent wall sculptures, vessels and paintings resemble votive objects and devotional paraphernalia and merge traditional materials with collected man-made objects. Controlled, repetitive patterns take on meaning as symbols of particular daily occurrences, food ingredients, cosmic elements or personal memories. Mundane can be sacred and disposable can be a treasure trove.
My process is rooted in traditional craft inspired by my native country, Romania. Drawings on textured surfaces and 3D objects are in a constant dialogue between intuitive and carefully planned and allow me to preserve my connection to ancestral making while expanding the dialogue of traditional and contemporary art. CV (PDF)