VICKY TSALAMATA. La comédie humaine. The Human Condition in the 21st Century

The Cluj-Napoca Art Museum, a cultural institution operating under the authority of the Cluj County Council, is organising the graphic art exhibition La comédie humaine. The Human Condition in the 21st Century (“The Human Comedy. The Human Condition in the 21st Century”) by artist Vicky Tsalamata, from 14 October to 1 November 2026.

The opening will take place on Wednesday, 14 October 2026, at 6:00 p.m., in the presence of the artist and her invited guests: Professor Lucian Nastasă-Kovács, PhD, Director of the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum; Ovidiu Petca, visual artist; Professor Elena Abrudan, PhD; and Dan Breaz, PhD, curator of the exhibition at the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum.

The exceptional quality of the artist’s work is also reflected in her substantial professional development: a degree in Painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna (1973) and a master’s degree in printmaking from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (1983). She is currently Professor Emerita at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

Vicky Tsalamata has held more than thirty-five international solo exhibitions in prominent art centres, including the Alexandria Museum of Fine Arts (2001); Galerija FLU, Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Arts in Belgrade (2001); Chapelle du Rahm, Luxembourg (2002); the Miklos Boros Museum, Győr (2008); and the Numismatic Museum of Athens (2012).

The artist has also participated in major international printmaking exhibitions organised by the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum. These include Tribuna Graphic (2022), the O.R.I.E.N.T. International Printmaking Exhibition (2023), and Symmetries. International Art Exhibition (2024).

La comédie humaine. The Human Condition in the 21st Century is an artistic meditation on two essential overarching themes in the artist’s work: time and the human condition. In this context, the human silhouette is regarded as a mirror of the era and society in which it exists. The exhibition reflects on a deeply contradictory reality. Although we live in a technologically interconnected society, we simultaneously experience new forms of isolation. Contemporary human beings are constantly caught between the need for closeness and the inability to enjoy it.

The La Comédie Humaine series continues the earlier series Life is Wildly Unpredictable. Can We Talk About It? and I Can’t Breathe – Life Is Like a Slow, Deep Breath. These series were created during the major European economic crisis of 2008–2014, a period that brought profound social crisis and isolation to Greece.

In 2019, the major economic crisis was followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which, this time, transformed isolation from a social phenomenon into a global collective experience. The absence of physical contact, uncertainty, forced separation from the “other”, and the fear of death consequently intensified the artist’s reflections on the fate of human beings and their vulnerability in the face of death.

La comédie humaine was created in the context of a broader exploration of the human condition during and after the crisis. Contemporary society becomes a stage populated by multiple roles. Social masks sometimes offer protection, while at other times they enslave. The face of the individual becomes both identity and mask, embodying alienation, suspicion, loneliness, competition, and aggression, but also a persistent need for authentic communication.

The sections Synapsis – The Invisible Order that Embodies Shapes and Metapolitefsi – From the 2026 Dark Nights to the Light of an Everending Day allude to Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which the human adventure is articulated through literature and visual form within a cosmic and spiritual universe. In contrast, in the La Comédie Humaine series, human beings experience the crisis of contemporary society. In the artist’s work, the human form is integrated into complex structures that generate human undulations and evoke a collective experience. The human figure does not appear as a finished image of humanity. It remains open, fragile, and contradictory. It is a figure in constant transformation—just like society itself.

The exhibition also includes selected works from the earlier Cityscapes series, from the sections Utopian Cities and City Maps A, B. Utopian Cities seeks to define the imprint of the fluidity of our age, in which everything is transient and ephemeral.

Bringing together concerns from different periods of artistic creation, the exhibition La Comédie Humaine. The Human Condition in the 21st Century at the Cluj-Napoca Art Museum represents an important turning point in the artistic career of Vicky Tsalamata.

The exhibition will remain open to the public until 1 November 2026, from Wednesday to Sunday inclusive, between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.