Through the project "Rom_", the Romanian photographer Alexandra Croitoru has stepped into a very sensitive field of national identity, after series of works in which she deals with the representation of power, stereotypes, strategies of identity manipulation. At the moment when her country is entering the preparatory phase for joining the EU, the author makes a photography cycle in which she poses wearing a three–color balacalava (Romanian flag colours), imitating the visual structure of pictures made by tourists, on different European and world locations, thus actualizing the questions of national discourse, heritage, frustrations, prejudices, assimilation, personifying at the same time fears, hopes, dilemmas, wishes of her own, as well as the social milieu of the whole region.

Aleksandra Croitoru

Born in 1975, in Romania. Lives and works In Bucharest. She graduated from the Graphics Section of Art Academy in Bucharest in 1998. Currently, she works as a professor assistant on the Photography and Video Section at Art University in Bucharest. She exhibited at numerous individual and group exhibitions in Bucharest, Helsinki, Bratislava, Zagreb. Her recent exhibitions include: National Museum of Art in Bucharest, K3 project space in Zurich, 47th October Salon in Belgrade. Macedonian curator Suzana Milevska chose the work of Alexandra Croitoru to present it as one of the most interesting photography practices from the Balkans area, in the Tate Modern, as a part of the project Global Photography Now.