Common Grounds. Networks of Practice

Common Grounds. Networks of Practice is a collaborative project between CICA – Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Gimpo, Korea, and CATEDRA – the Research Center for Photography and Media Art at the “George Enescu” National University of Arts, Iași, Romania. It brings together  projects created by eleven artists working across diverse cultural and disciplinary contexts, whose practices intersect through shared operational logics rather than thematic uniformity. The projects consist in a printed publication and two international exhibitions, one in CICA Museum Gallery in Gimpo, Korea, and one in Aparte Gallery of UNAGE Iasi, Romania.

Common Grounds continues the broader Commons series initiated in 2022 by Cătălin Soreanu and Lavinia German, conceived as a long-term platform for artistic dialogue across distinct geographical and cultural contexts. The series departs from the premise that meaningful intersections emerge when artistic visions from different The editorial team formed by Lavinia German (RO), Leejin Kim (KR), and Cătălin Soreanu (RO), approached the assembly of this collaboration as a curatorial act. Therefore, this 2026 project unfolds as a cartography of interconnected practices, bringing together artists from Korea – Dho Yee Chung, Gustav Hellberg, Sung-A Jang, Minsu Kim, and Alex Jaehyun Kim, and from Romania – Ciprian Ciuclea, Andrei Cozlac, dr0mp [Radu-Alexandru Andrei], Cătălin Marinescu, Radu Marțin, and Mihai-Aureliu Savin. Rather than proposing a single subject or stylistic direction, the mai concept of the collaboration traces a set of relations structured around the triad of subject, medium, and practice. The selected projects explore how agency circulates between human gesture, technological systems, ecological environments, and representational surfaces. Through drawing, installation, video art, interactive systems, speculative ecology, algorithmic mediation, and performative delegation, the artists examine processes of accumulation, modeling, detection, conversion, hybridization, and representation.

Published by CICA Press and estimated for mid-2026, the printed publication will also be accompanied by a critical contribution by Cristian Nae, whose essay offers an independent theoretical perspective on the projects included, situating them within broader contemporary debates on mediation, distributed agency, and the shifting conditions of artistic production.

The project is supported by ICMA – the Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art of UNAGE, and C_F_C – the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Iași, Romania.