Irina Gheorghe works primarily with performance, in combination with installation, drawing, photography or video, to address the tensions inherent in the attempts to speak about things beyond our possibilities of observation, from extraterrestrial life to hypothetical planets. Her work explores the notion of deviation as a technique of estranging the everyday, abstraction as a language for interstellar communication and the absurd as the mood of interaction to a world beyond perception. Since 2009, Irina Gheorghe has also been working with Alina Popa as part of the artist duo The Bureau of Melodramatic Research to investigate how passions shape contemporary society, as well as our affective relationship to an unhuman universe. Since January 2019 she has been part of the Psychedelic Choir.
Solo exhibitions and projects include "Methods for the Study of What Is Not There" at Künstlerhaus Bremen (2021), "Betraying the Senses, or How to Speak of What Is Not There” at Project Arts Centre Dublin and “All the Things Which Are Not Here” at Swimming Pool Projects Sofia (2019). Solo performances include “Preliminary Remarks on the Study of What Is Not There” at the Grazer Kunstverein (2021) and “Foreign Language for Beginners” at ICI Berlin (2021). Other exhibitions and projects include presentations at Ivan Gallery Bucharest, National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, Zona Sztuki Aktualnej Stettin, Changing Room Berlin, Suprainfinit Gallery Bucharest, Centre for Contemporary Art Derry, Glasgow International, TRAFO Budapest, Pratt Manhattan Gallery New York, Times Museum Guangzhou, HOME Manchester, S A V V Y Contemporary Berlin, Salonul de Proiecte Bucharest, Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius, BAK, Utrecht, DEPO Istanbul and Galeria Posibila Bucharest, among others.
Irina Gheorghe studied painting and photography at the National University of Arts Bucharest and has completed a PhD in artistic practice at GradCAM/TU Dublin.