Teodora Axente (born 1984, Sibiu) lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, where she received an MFA and Ph.D. at the University of Art And Design. Using a distinct dark palette, she addresses the themes of passing, transience, and refusal by imbuing the staged appearance of her figures with an elusive sense of beauty. Teodora Axente’s paintings simultaneously repel and try to restore the viewer to the present time by rendering common fabrics and textures with a remarkably refined pictorial technique.