Public Space Between Use and Access
Access to public space in Chișinău must be understood in terms of an unstable institutional ecology, shaped by the socialist legacy, the post-Soviet transition, and the absence of a coherent modern cultural infrastructure. In this configuration, public space is not merely a neutral backdrop but an urban resource subject to control, negotiation, and conflict. Participatory artistic practices developed in this context become tools for intervention, symbolic reclaiming, and the constitution of an alternative form of institutionalization. Chișinău lacks a public institution specialized in representing contemporary art, such as a dedicated museum. This void generates an artistic scene in a constant state of institutional improvisation, supported by independent initiatives, informal networks, and cross-sectoral partnerships.

The accessibility of public space in Chișinău should be seen as part of a broader process of socio-spatial reconfiguration following the collapse of the socialist system.

The city has undergone a series of fragmented and uncoordinated transformations, in which inherited common spaces were either privatized or abandoned, and the idea of public space as a site of collective expression and civic engagement has been gradually eroded. In the absence of a stable institutional framework to support contemporary art and its participatory practices, independent initiatives have become the main driving force behind the reinvention of urban cultural infrastructure.

Emergent Institutional Practices: The Case of KSA:K
The NGO Center for Contemporary Art KSA:K, founded in Chișinău in 2000, operates as an independent organization dedicated to contemporary art, visual education, and artistic research. Its activity aims to develop an alternative framework for the production and dissemination of art, outside official institutions and traditional exhibition logics. In the absence of a stable infrastructure, KSA:K has initiated a series of projects aimed at activating peripheral or overlooked urban spaces, revalorizing them through collaborative artistic interventions.

A key component of its strategy is its focus on young audiences: students from high schools and art schools, undergraduate and graduate visual arts students, as well as emerging artists. This strategic choice not only addresses educational needs but also aims to build critical communities capable of actively contributing to co-creation processes and redefining the relationship between art and urban space.

Kunsträume – An Artistic Network of Alternative Spaces
A significant moment in the development of Chișinău’s independent artistic infrastructure was the Kunsträume project (2014–2016), carried out by the Goethe-Institut Bucharest in partnership with KSA:K and Goethe-Zentrum Chișinău, with support from the German Federal Foreign Office. The project aimed to activate a network of alternative art spaces in Moldova and Ukraine, supporting emerging cultural production in contexts affected by political instability and chronic underfunding.

Three emblematic spaces were developed within this project: Bunker Gallery, located in the basement of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Decorative Arts, and Design at AMTAP (Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts), obtained through a public-civic partnership; Podzemka Gallery, housed in a basement space of the "Alexei Sciusev" School of Fine Arts, where the link with the educational process is direct and ongoing; and the Warmepol Zone, an intermedia project combining urban gardening and artistic intervention, located on the rooftop of the “Al. Plămădeală” College of Fine Arts, which introduces an ecological and community-oriented dimension to the discourse on public space.

These spaces function outside conventional exhibition frameworks, activated through pedagogical, artistic, and curatorial practices based on collaboration, openness, and continuous negotiation.

Hybrid Partnerships: Between Civicism and Cultural Economy
Alongside the public-civic partnership models developed through Kunsträume, Chișinău’s art scene increasingly explores collaborations with the private sector. One such example is KSA:K’s partnership with Galeria Plai, a commercial contemporary art space that supports emerging artistic initiatives and provides a visibility platform for young artists.

This civic-private collaboration reflects a logic of functional co-dependence in a context where public resources are limited and traditional institutional structures are ineffective or absent.

Such hybrid alliances do not erase ideological or economic differences but propose a framework of negotiated coexistence, in which access to public space is reconsidered through the lens of artistic autonomy, circulation, and infrastructural sustainability.

Public Space as an Open Institution
The case study presented here shows that, in post-socialist Chișinău, access to public space for participatory artistic practices is inseparable from processes of alternative institutionalization. Initiatives such as those developed by KSA:K do not merely occupy physical spaces but propose models of emergent institutionalization based on critical pedagogy, cross-sector partnerships, and community involvement.

Accessibility, in this framework, is not a pre-existing condition but the outcome of collective claims, social organization, and artistic co-creation. Public space thus becomes not only the stage for aesthetic interventions but an open, permeable, and politicizable institution – a living framework in which the forms of a shared cultural future are negotiated.

Emergent artistic infrastructure in Chișinău offers not only models for occupying and re-signifying urban space but also the possibility of imagining a different institutional future – one that is flexible, decentralized, and participatory, in which art means coexistence rather than isolation, and public space represents possibility rather than control.

Lilia Dragneva (b. 1975, Chișinău) is a visual artist, curator, and researcher active in the contemporary art scene of the Republic of Moldova. Since 2000, she has led the Center for Contemporary Art [ksa:k] and serves as curator of the BUNKER Gallery, where she develops an informal school for curatorial practices. Her artistic path began with experimental sound and image works influenced by avant-garde and Dada sources, later shifting toward critical discourse and the construction of new, symbolic narratives rooted in Moldovan society. She has participated in exhibitions such as After the Wall (Moderna Museet, Stockholm), Body and the East (Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana), and Senses Test Station (Moscow). As curator, she has worked with artists from Moldova, Ukraine, and the broader diaspora, initiating projects like WÄRMEPOL, the Evening School of Academic Drawing, and the CarbonART creative camp. She also produced the national TV program ALTE ARTE (2004–2007) with support from Kulturstiftung des Bundes. She teaches art history, management, and curatorial practices at AMTAP and the Fine Arts College “Al. Plămădeală”. Between 2012–2017 she was a researcher at the Institute of Cultural Heritage and is currently finalizing a PhD on contemporary art in Moldova.