Curator: Ioana Cobzaru (NL-RO).

Ana Scripcariu-Ochiai (1992) is a visual artist who has family roots in two cultures. She has been born, raised and educated in Japan, but she is half Romanian so after her studies she pursued getting in touch with the culture and the people of Romania.Ana is a mixed media artist who performs cultural and anthropological field work, including documentation of indigenous festivals and folk religions in various parts of Japan and abroad. In recent years she has been involved in the field of primatology as an extension of her work. She graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts with a degree in Oil Painting at the top of her class and as a valedictorian of the Faculty of Fine Arts, where she also completed an MA in Global Art Practice. She is now enrolled in a doctoral program in sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited in Japan and internationally, at The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Japan (2023, 2020-2021), The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Romania ( 2020), in Hoi An, Vietnam ( 2019), at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2019) and at Chambord, Paris, France (2017) to name a few.

‘Vessels of Light’ is an impressive, intimate and well documented body of work that has recently been realized by the artist during her one year field work in Romania, photographing and researching traditions and daily life. The curator team of Bucharest Photofest was really touched by the level of sensitivity and the strong sense of belonging expressed by ‘Vessels of Light’. The project is clearly showing that the artist has immersed herself in the culture and the social vibe of her second home country and that she was able to get in front of her lens the very essence of the Romanian soul throughout the four seasons. Her work feels documentary, but bears also a beautiful touch of fine art and a strong sense of poetry.