The DESTE Foundation is pleased to announce a solo presentation by the artist Andra Ursuţa, which opens on June 24, 2025, at the Foundation’s Project Space, a former slaughterhouse on the island of Hydra. This exhibition combines new and existing works by Ursuţa, including the debut of the artist’s cast bronze sculptures, as well as a selection of forms in glass and a variety of media.
By displaying work both inside and outside the Slaughterhouse, Ursuţa creates a kind of viewing experience that is inspired by historical museums and archaeological sites in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean and is informed by the ancient artifacts and sculptural remnants that are housed within them. Both familiar and absurd, the artist’s sculptures are assembled from fragments of work and detritus from her studio—using digital and analog technologies—and suggest objects from a civilization that no longer exists.
About the artist
Andra Ursuţa (b. 1979) was born in Salonta, Romania, a town on the Romanian–Hungarian border, and left for the United States in 1997. She moved to New York in 1999 and received a BA in Art History and Visual Arts in 2002 from Columbia University.
From 2018 to 2019, a solo exhibition of the artist’s work, Vanilla Isis, was presented at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy. Alps, which was on view in 2016 at the New Museum, marked the artist’s first museum show in New York. Ursuţa’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at prominent venues internationally, including Kunsthalle Basel (2015); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2014–2015); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (2014); and Peep-Hole Art Center, Milan (2014). Ursuţa’s work has also been included in important group exhibitions worldwide, such as Making Their Mark, curated by Cecilia Alemani, Shah Garg Foundation, New York (2023); 59th Venice Biennale (2022); ARS22: Living Encounters, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (2022); 58th Venice Biennale (2019); The Warmth of Other Suns: Stories of Global Displacement, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (2019); The Trick Brain, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2017–2018); 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017); 13th Lyon Biennale (2015–2016); Artists and Poets, Secession, Vienna (2015); and the 55th Venice Biennale (2013).
Ursuţa lives and works between London and New York.
________________________________________________________________________________
Featured image: Andra Ursuţa, Half-Drunk Mummy, 2025 (detail) | © the artist; photo: Dario Lasagni
