Image: Studio view, Ana Lupas, Prapori (Funeral Flags), Ca. 1961-1964 © Photo: Carlo Favero
S.M.A.K. in Ghent will devote a major autumn exhibition to Ana Lupaș, presenting the Romanian artist’s later work alongside a selection of works by her partner, S P A T A R U. Titled ‘Ana Lupas met S P A T A R U | On Ritual Time’, the exhibition is scheduled to run from 10 October 2026 to 21 February 2027.
The museum describes Lupaș as one of the most important artists of her generation in Eastern Europe. Its announcement frames the exhibition around a practice that connects avant-garde approaches with ancient rural traditions and forms of quiet political resistance. The presentation will focus on the later phase of Lupaș’s life and work. The museum’s exhibition page adds that Lupaș was born in 1940 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and that since the 1960s she has combined inherited craft techniques with experimental media and materials, seeking renewal within existing traditions in dialogue with the international avant-garde while circumventing the ideological and aesthetic constraints of the communist regime.
S P A T A R U’s inclusion is presented as an integral part of the project rather than as a separate exhibition. S.M.A.K. identifies the partner as S P A T A R U, the Romanian artist Mircea Spătaru (1937–2011), and says the selection of his works supplements its exploration of her later oeuvre. In the museum’s wording, the combination can be read as an artistic testament, a description that places the exhibition’s emphasis on continuity, shared context and the relationship between the two artists’ practices.
The exhibition’s title, ‘On Ritual Time’, reflects the institutional description of Lupaș’s work as linking contemporary and avant-garde artistic strategies with longstanding rural traditions. The exhibition page also notes that this is Lupaș’s first institutional exhibition in Belgium, and that it is accompanied by a monograph on her oeuvre, co-produced by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, and S.M.A.K. The page does not list individual works or describe the gallery layout.
The exhibition will take place at S.M.A.K., the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, at Jan Hoetplein 1 in Ghent. The museum’s official website presents its programme through exhibitions, collection displays and public activities, and its autumn schedule places Lupaș’s project among a series of exhibitions and events planned for 2026. Those other listings include separate projects devoted to choreographer Meg Stuart and painter Bendt Eyckermans, but they are not part of the Lupaș exhibition.
S.M.A.K. gives no separate vernissage date beyond the exhibition’s first day, and names no curatorial team or lenders; the monograph is the only publication announced. The confirmed presentation of ‘Ana Lupas met S P A T A R U | On Ritual Time’ at S.M.A.K. runs from 10 October 2026 through 21 February 2027.
