ARTIST STATEMENT
At the core of my artistic practice lies a search for meaning. This journey unfolds through the realization of meaning’s absence, leading to the understanding that meaning is not inherent but something we actively imagine and create, shaped by personal experience and by interpretations of what it means to be human.
I begin each project by asking the question: “How do I/we enter?” – within a space, an idea, a memory, a process, a rhythm etc. This question guides my approach to performance as both method and encounter. Working across performance art, scenography, and time-based media, I approach the stage as a transitional space: a site where perception shifts, change can emerge, and bodies, environments, and memories negotiate their presence with one another.
My artistic process follows the course of the spiral: I enter without certainty, guided by an intuitive pull. As the questions, images, and sensations surface again and again, repetition turns into transformation. Rather than moving linearly toward resolution, I approach each act as an ongoing unfolding shaped by cycles of observation, embodiment, reflection, and exchange, giving as much attention as needed to the process.
A central part of my artistic methodology is Spatial Sensitivity, which informs how I shape performative encounters and approach the stage as a relational environment. In my work, it unfolds through attentive listening, spatial awareness, and close attention to how bodies move, gather, and respond within a shared atmosphere. It guides decisions around proximity, rhythm, duration, improvisation and composition, shaping how audiences physically, sensorially and emotionally inhabit the work.
While my work draws from every day encounters as well as magical realism, symbolism, phenomenology, and theatre of experience, at its core it is concerned with welcoming the unknown, both in life and on the stage. It does not aim to narrate specific events from my life, but rather it distills the essence of lived experience into independent performative acts: crossing points where personal and collective perceptions intersect.
BIO
Cezara Gurau (b. 1999, Romania) is a Balkan performance maker, visual artist and researcher based in The Netherlands. Her time-based work stretches across performance art, dance, scenography, photography and film. With roots on the banks of the Danube Delta, she discovered from an early age that places are not just external geographies but also internal realities. This understanding of the fluidity of space and memory is one of the sensibilities that fuels her artistic practice. Cezara holds an MA in Scenography from HKU (2024), Utrecht, and a BA in Time-Based Design from Minerva Art Academy, Groningen (2022).
She continues to explore and deepen the hybridity of her practice, shifting between performing on stage and operating behind it. From 2025 onward, Cezara began spaces that allow her to continue learning and developing. While her earlier work was primarily concerned with studying space through scenography, her focus gradually shifted toward improvisational dance and performance. In 2024, she joined Movement Laboratory (AMS) founded by Sophia Garcia Miramon and by doing so, she performed in productions such as Ephemera (2024) and Ikigai (2025).
Currently, she is developing NOWHERE (2026), a new performance work and the second chapter of the ELSEWHERE trilogy, exploring the paradox of nowhere as both emptiness and the most precise form of belonging.
She founded studiospiral, an initiative dedicated to creating, directing and producing sensitive acts, as well as maintaining connection and collaborating across distances with international artists. Cezara develops her research and practice through solo and collaborative works, as well as experimental workshops based on her artistic methodology, Spatial Sensitivity. Her work is presented in international residencies, performance festivals, and exhibitions.
portrait by Jethro Bijleveld
CEZARA GURAU 