Ioana Nemes

Born 1979 in Bucharest/Romania, died 2011 in New York, NY/USA.

Ioana Nemes studied sports at the University of Physical Education & Sports in Bucharest (1997–1999) and  visual arts at the University of Fine Arts in Bucharest (2000–2005). She participated in numerous national and international exhibitions. In 2011, shortly before she passed away, her first big solo show in New York, NY/USA was opened.

In 2006 Maria Farcas, Dragos Olea, Erika Olea, Gyarfas Olah und Ioana Nemes (1979–2011, R.I.P) initiated the fashion label Rozalb de Mura. For their work the group received the Kontakt. Erste Bank Fashion Award, Vienna/Austria (2006) and a research residency at the Swedish Visual Arts Fund’s international programme (IASPIS) in Stockholm/Sweden (2010). They participated in several festivals and exhibitions like The Drums of War Will Thunder Once Again that was presented at the Seoul Fashion Week, Seoul/Korea (2008) and ARRRGH! Monsters and Storytelling in Fashion at the Benaki Museum, Athens/Greece (May to August 2011).

In autumn 2010, during their IASPIS residency in Stockholm, the group started rethinking of their interests. As a result, they changed into an art and fashion collective named Apparatus 22. Apparatus 22 works in the art context with ideas and actions that will ignite the critical potential of clothing and fashion and in design/fashion contexts with projects that aim to find new ways to avoid fashion system’s biggest failures. In their quest for projects with greater consequences on fashion topics they are mixing fiction with reality, storytelling and critical approach, blurring the lines between genders and using knowledge and experiences from art, design, sociology, litterature and economics.