MY OLD GROWTH TREES | MAIA STEFANA OPREA x MERON GALLERY

24/04/2025

They are memories. They are bodies.
They are vertical testimonies of a love no longer shouted.

Beneath the bark, a different time pulses —
one we lose in the noise of the day.

There are places we’ve never walked, yet somehow recognize. Standing before Maia Ștefana Oprea’s artworks feels like stepping into such a place — a forest not found on maps, but written into memory.

The trees here don’t overwhelm by height, but by presence. They stretch beyond reason, anchored in myth, history, and personal memory. They’ve witnessed what we’ve forgotten. They carry stories — of survival, of silence, of enduring beauty.

My Old Growth Trees is a return — to something quiet and essential. To stand in front of these artworks is to feel a rhythm that lives beneath language.

You are the child. You are the tree.
And for a moment, you remember how to listen to a time that moves slower than memory and older than forgetting.

About Maia Ștefana Oprea:

Maia Ștefana Oprea is known for her rich and unconventional artistic path, which includes international exhibitions in Venice, London, and Liverpool, as well as academic studies in the United States and France. She was awarded the Brâncoveanu Prize in 2017 and gained further recognition with the exhibition My Collections of Forms at AnnArt Gallery’s booth at Vienna Contemporary in 2019. Since then, her trajectory shifted, breaking away from a linear course to embrace more ephemeral forms of artistic expression — incorporating textiles, found objects, and even living plants — often taking place in natural environments, most notably at the ‘Garden of Ideas’, a long-envisioned eco-art community.