Hortensia Mi Kafchin: Through Different Eyes

Hortensia Mi Kafchin activates the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art facade space with a new installation, Through Different Eyes, 2026. An established painter, Kafchin is known for her dreamscapes, which bridge the pastoral, the surrealist, and the techno-futuristic. Here, she returns to a multidisciplinary approach with a transfixing three-channel synchronized video. A trio of eyes examines and disorients its viewer, mimicking both the experience of being actively surveilled and Kafchin’s experience of being observed and investigated as a trans woman and Romanian immigrant. The eye in Through Different Eyes, undergoes a transformative evolution—from ocular visuals of blood cells, code, cyborgs and planets. Kafchin critiques the harmful reality of technology used against her communities whilst pursuing the through line for a queer and trans techno-utopia.

Hortensia Mi Kafchin (b. 1986) was born in Galati, Romania and now lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Within her multifaceted practice, Kafchin unites a highly classical painting style with a distinctive set of motifs and an enduring fascination with hybridity that reflects the blended visual environment of our media age. As a figurative painter making work about the contemporary trans experience, Kafchin vividly renders the personal in utopian scenes that comment on the technological, environmental, and socio-political realities of our time. Kafchin received a degree from the University of Art and Design in Cluj in 2010. Her work can be found in collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, NY; and the Ludwig Museum, Köln, Germany. Kafchin has presented solo exhibitions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania; Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany; Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara, Romania; Lyles & King, New York, NY; and Museum of Art, Cluj, Romania, among others. Kafchin has also taken part in group exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; New Museum, New York, NY; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria; The Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; and Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, among others. In 2023, Kafchin presented her first solo exhibition with P·P·O·W, Years of Bad Hair. She presented her third solo exhibition with Galerie Judin, Cheerful Melancholia, in early 2024. Kafchin’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, Paintings Made for Aliens Above, was on view in Fall 2025.