Emanuela Lucaci artistic universe explores the human condition and its unattained potential. This quest for human’s fantastic and unexplored possibilities has been the leitmotif in her works focusing on individuals’ distorted perception of reality. This endless research led her to study at CERN, amongst physicists that try to dissect fundamental truths and the laws governing the Universe. Later, she explored psychoanalysis and spiritual practices. The body of work she presents is essentially paintings but also photography, poetry, video, and installation.
“My childhood takes place in a bucolic Romania, more precisely Transylvania dotted with ancestral beliefs, primary forests, and nature free from industrialization. As a child, I personalized trees, bugs, birds, and clouds creating a fantasy world where stories slip through a suspended time. My sketchbook was my friend and my confident guarding my sacred secrets and dreams.
In 2018, I started a permaculture garden on the shores of Lake Leman. The theatre of nature opens again, and bugs, trees, birds, and clouds come back to unveil the stories I left unfinished as a child. Truth shoots out like a light at the end of a tunnel that has suffocated me for decades. I can paint again; it is green and simple like a fresh breath of air.”
Lucaci follows an artistic training from the age of six under the tutelage of a master and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in her hometown, Oradea in Romania where she specialized in painting. She pursues an artistic career that brings her to work and exhibit in several countries including Romania, Switzerland, France, the United States, Finland, and Mexico.
Lucaci has exhibited her work in numerous countries starting with her series “Freedom” (1999), a solo exhibition at the Human Rights House (Geneva) inaugurated by Mary Robinson former president of Ireland and Human Rights Commissioner. In 2001, the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York invited Lucaci to exhibit the “Sky Genesis” series. She was awarded for her “Big Bang Installation” proposal (2004) and commissioned subsequently to realize a large-scale artwork (15 x 15 meters) for the ALICE experiment at CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research), where she was an artist in residence for 5 years (2003-2008). In 2006, she was commissioned by UNICEF New York to realize a painting on the theme of Maternity. In 2012, Lucaci collaborated as an actress for the short movie “Unveiled”, a fiction depicting the artistic struggle. In 2018, she was invited to co-host a conference on creativity at UNICEF’s SkillShare Forum in Amsterdam. Lucaci currently lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland, and teaches art since 2008.
