Teodora Axente (born in Sibiu, Romania, in 1984) lives and works in Cluj-Napoca. She completed both an MFA and a PhD at the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca.

Working through a distinct dark palette and a highly refined painterly technique, Axente explores themes of transience, absence, and resistance through staged figures whose presence oscillates between visibility and concealment. Fabrics, skin, and tactile surfaces become central elements through which psychological tension and corporeal ambiguity emerge.

In 2007, she attended the École supérieure des beaux-arts de Rennes through the Erasmus programme. In 2011, she received the ESSL Art Award CEE at Essl Museum; in 2017, she was awarded the Frissiras Award for European Painting at Frissiras Museum.

In 2025–2026, she presented the institutional solo exhibition Metamorfosi del Sacro at Santa Maria della Scala, a site-specific project conceived in dialogue with the museum’s historical architecture and curated by Riccardo Freddo and Michela Eremita.

Recent solo exhibitions include The Soft Coating Suspended Between Vertical and Horizontal at Galleria Doris Ghetta (2024), The Body as a Coat of Shadow and the Coat as a Body of Light at 104 Galerie, Tokyo and W-One Space, Shenzhen (2023), Vertical Body Mirrors at Rosenfeld Gallery (2022), and Listen How the Horns Are Growing at 104 Gallery, Tokyo (2021).

Earlier solo exhibitions include The Presence of Absence at Galleria Doris Ghetta (2017), The Noise of Silence at Art Center Hugo Voeten (2016), Dipping into Matter at Galleria Doris Ghetta (2015), and Lighting the Dark at Galleria Doris Ghetta (2013).

Her work has been included in institutional exhibitions such as Madness in Bremen (2022) and Love is a Dog from Hell at Frissiras Museum (2019), alongside numerous presentations across Europe and Asia.

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