Mircea Cantor

Overview

Mircea Cantor born 1977, Oradea, Romania. Lives and works on Earth.

Cantor makes films and sculptural installations that often elaborate on uncertainty, countering prevailing notions that everything can be known or predicted. His work, which regularly offers subtle critiques on the architecture of power, is equally centered on unveiling methods of empirical engagement with objects and images through a sustained long-term examination. More recently Cantor has taken up the question craftsmanship and tradition to relating the “intuitive” energy that tests how different fields of knowledge might make sense of human creation and the multiplicity of perspectives that inform our understanding of our relationship to time, consciousness, and experience.

Mircea Cantor has had numerous solo presentation in prestigious institutions worldwide such as Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Fondation Hermès, Tokyo, Japan; Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, Italy; Musée Picasso, Paris, France; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania; Museum of Moving Image, NYC, USA; MACRO Museo di Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy; Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; Centro de Arte moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal. His works are part of major public collections such as Rennie collection, Vancouver, (Canada); Centre Pompidou, Paris (France); Museum of Modern Art, New York (USA); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (Spain); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (France); Magazine 3, Stockholm (Sweden); Kunsthaus Zurich (Switzerland); Philadelphia Museum of Art (USA); Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. (USA); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (USA); Yvon Lambert Collection, Avignon (France); Pinault Collection (France).

Cantor received the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2011 and the Prix Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard in 2004. In 2017, he debuted in scenography for The Little Prince at the Teatrul de Comedie, Bucharest. In 2019, he illustrated the Opéra de Paris’s 350th anniversary season and created a commemorative stamp edition for La Poste. In 2020, he conceived a performance at the Greek Theater of Syracuse with INDA. In 2023, he collaborated with Dior on two Lady Dior Arthandbags, and in 2025 he designed the visual identity for the Saut Hermès equestrian competition in Paris. He was decorated with the Order of Arts and Letters (Officer), France, and the National Order of Merit (Knight), Romania, both in 2019.

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Works