Passing Through

Raluca Iancu is an artist and printmaker currently based in Iowa. Her work investigates disaster, memory, and vulnerability through different media, ranging from printmaking to performance, to edible art and printed objects. She is interested in how our relationship with technology can simultaneously enhance our lives, while it can also leave us vulnerable

Iancu writes, “The automobile drastically changed the way that we experience the world. The prints exhibited at Project Art are part of an ongoing body of work that examines the built environment as both a physical and emotional landscape, focusing on overpasses, roadways, and infrastructural forms that shape our experience of continuity, disaster, and repair.

Overpasses are among the most familiar forms in contemporary life, especially within car-centric regions such as the Midwest, yet they are rarely examined beyond their utility. I am drawn to their sweeping curves and engineered grace, in sharp contrast to the social inequities and ecological disruptions they enact by dividing neighborhoods and ecosystems. In this work, these structures are not necessarily rendered as triumphant feats of progress but rather as unstable remnants, imagined within a speculative future where concrete has outpaced sustainability, reflecting on the consequences of our over-reliance on automobiles. Through this lens, I invite viewers to reconsider their relationship to both the natural and built environments.”

Raluca Iancu is currently an Associate Professor in Art & Visual Culture, Printmaking, at Iowa State University. She earned her MFA from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, Canada. Recent awards include a 2026 Faculty Award for Outstanding Achievement from the College of Design, and a Research Grant from the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities.

To learn more about Raluca visit www.ralu.ca or Instagram: @raluca_iancu