The images, sounds, drawings, and videos presented here are traces of my inborn contemplative activity. 

As I explored and as time passed by, these different objects accumulated on shelves, hard drives, and in conversations with friends. They emerged as a series of "graphies," whose only ambition is to be traces of my personal experience and different phases of my life. 

In this sense, my artistic practice is a necessary release of a surplus of sensations that have no other outlet for expression. 

I present here what I consider to be completed and intelligible. I call all these traces "bota-graphies", that is forms of writing in a broad sense, forms of expression of myself, Cristian Bota.

I was born in Romania, in 1977, when dictatorship was in full swing. I grew up in Cluj, in Transylvania, with a constant thirst for meaning and beauty. I followed a long academic path, studying linguistics (in Cluj), philosophy, and educational sciences (in Geneva). 

Over time, I realized that intellectual stimulation was not enough for me and that I needed to move away from words, language, and thinking, which were at the core of my profession. I first sought the silence of photography and its own power to induce experience and meaning. To me, the meanings of a photograph are all suspended, they remain forever in a potential state. Ultimately, when I look and I photograph, I see potentials (whether in spaces, in bodies, in faces). Potentials on the verge of blossoming. 

Then, when I was about 40, I met my piano teacher and, thankfully, I turned to music. I learned the basics of music theory, learned to listen, and to open myself to what listening could teach me. I became a bad pianist, but I found the courage to pursue my musical interests, specifically in the field of electronic music. 

Today, I spend my free time between photography and synthesizers.

Cristian Bota