Adina Andrus

category: Visual,

Contact & Info


Artist Statement

I see my work is as a documentation of human experiences by integrating ordinary, day-to-day objects and materials with signs and symbols that have shaped our visual culture and have become part of our collective identity. Using quasi-archaeological means, I find commonalities across history and geographical areas, triggering a semiotic recognition on a personal level, while also submitting them to an imaginative and creative reinterpretation.
I use mixed media in various forms for its capacity to reach beyond the visual, to a more tactile process and overall experience. I invite the viewer to come closer and observe the ridges, cracks, strings, textures and pigment, like maps that hint at layers of meaning. Much of my process involves reclaiming discarded objects, as well as destroying and reconstituting new ones and the materials blend industrial, contemporary ones (concrete, plastic, ephemera) with wood, rocks and pigments evoking primitive means of artistic expression.  

Educational Background

Adina Andrus (born in Bucharest, Romania, currently based in New York) works across various media, creating 2D mixed media pieces, sculptures, drawings and installations that confront questions of memory, belonging, and visual culture across time and space. Her works allude to a shared pool of images that we inherit, consume and are being guided by, while simultaneously interpreting and contributing new meanings.  Much of her process is akin to map making --- using found objects, textiles, collage, and ink to create the tension between organic relief shapes and contained, linear borders and passageways.

Andrus studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Art Students League in New York City. She has been exhibiting work in New York and in numerous galleries across the United States, including the St. Louis Artists Guild, El Barrio's Artspace in NY, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and the Delaware Contemporary, as well as in Bucharest, Romania. In 2020 she was a recipient of the Queens Council for the Arts New Work Grant.