Puzzles – an exhibition by Teodor Ajder
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Puzzles – an exhibition by Teodor Ajder
Saturday, October 25, 2025, 7:00 PM – opening
October 25 – November 8, 2025, from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM – visiting hours for every Thursday and Saturday
Zpace (Casa Zemstvei, 103, Al. Sciusev St., Chisinau)
On Saturday, October 25, 2025, at 7:00 PM, the opening of the exhibition “Puzzles” by Teodor Ajder will take place, which questions the ambivalence surrounding the presence of immigrants and refugees.
This exhibition brings together two interconnected series of works that invite the viewer into a space of play, questioning, and discovery. On the surface, they appear as games: modernist looking puzzles in which color and form play an unclear role. Their hidden layers speak to one of the most urgent challenges of our time: how we look at and live with the Other. More specifically, the works reflect on the tensions, fears, and possibilities surrounding the presence of immigrants and refugees, where ambivalence often surfaces between compassion and suspicion, empathy and rejection.
The first series consists of an eight- and nine-panels acrylic polyptychs in a formalist genre that one might call geometrical abstraction. At first glance, they look like some mathematical arrangements of vibrant planes, sharp lines, and rhythmic sequences. Yet these canvases conceal a secret. They are a visual puzzle: once the viewer grasps the coded message, the work shifts irreversibly. The eye cannot return to innocence. What seemed random becomes inevitable, what seemed coldly abstract becomes deeply human. The octaptych was presented for the first time in an exhibition in Birmingham, Alabama, in the United States, titled Ligatures, in February, 2025. The language of this puzzle is English. For this exhibition at Zpace, Mr. Ajder has created a Romanian rendition, carefully adapted to the linguistic and cultural local context. In this way, this newer version is an additional hint. The Moldovan viewer is presented with a Rossetta Stone-like translation. Nevertheless, it still challenges the patrons to confront meanings that may feel uncomfortably close, mirroring local debates about belonging, borders, and shared futures.
The second part of the exhibition takes the form of clay objects titled Love, Love, Love, created for the fairly famous charitable ceramics event Empty Bowls. Within this framework, local potters contribute to raising funds for individuals facing homelessness. Unlike the clarity usually associated with clay, these pieces do not lend themselves to an easy reading. Each object bears inscribed texts upon its surface; yet the words, partially veiled beneath thick layers of glaze, become indistinct—fragmentary, hesitant, like snippets of overheard conversations or memories half-lived, half-dreamed.
Together, the paintings and ceramics, as usually is the case with artworks, do not deliver solutions. Instead, they propose a form of encounter: slow, demanding, and at times uncomfortable. By shelling the colors, the shapes, and the words, the viewer participates in the very act of negotiation that defines our relationship to the stranger, the guest, the migrant, the refugee. The puzzles may frustrate, but they also reward—revealing visions that cannot be unseen once discovered. In doing so, the exhibition asks each of us to reconsider the fragile balance between suspicion and generosity, fear and love.
Sophie Calliope
Teodor Ajder (1978) was born in Chișinău. He studied psychology at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, and completed his master’s degree in education sciences and his doctorate in media, information, and environmental sciences at Yokohama State University. He currently lives in Warsaw, where he edits the annual publication Mămăliga de Varșovia. In his work, he attempts to combine visual arts with fiction and criticism in an effort to understand the condition of migration. He is the author of several book objects, including Obrăzaru-i pentru o japonez[c]ă (Obrăzaru for a Japanese Woman), published in Romania by FrACTalia, Bucharest (2019), and MoPoJaRo, Galeria Dzialan/Galeria Studio, Warsaw (2010, 2019).
This event is organized by Oberliht Association as part of the SCA2025 / Alternative Cultural Spaces – a public program of cultural events, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Moldova and FundAction / hosted by Zpace / media partners: #diez, youth.md, fest.md, agora.md and platzforma.md / technical support: CSCI of RM. The organizer and partners condemn any form of sexist, homophobic, homophobic, misogynist, racist, xenophobic, or other forms of hate speech.