Mihaela Cîrjan (b. 1985) is an interdisciplinary cultural worker based in Bucharest, Romania, acting independently as cultural manager and, under the chosen name Michelle Panthère, as cultural context creator. She works in collaboration with artists and artistic collectives from different cultural backgrounds or with her own ideas, focusing on a practice of collective care and growth. In 2016 she co-founded the NGO MATKA, an instrument to develop artistic and educational projects for and with marginalized groups. In 2020 she initiated Rezidența21, a platform for artistic residencies and programs focused on experimental and contemporary music production and the development of the local independent scene. Also in 2020, she co-founded the initiative Atelierele Malmaison, a space dedicated primarily to hosting artist studios in the historical building Malmaison in Bucharest, and she is currently part of the multidisciplinary collective L1 Studios, which was formed in this context. In 2023, she co-created Satelit, a pop-up space for contemporary art in the National Technical Museum in Bucharest.
In recent years her interests have expanded into the curatorial area, with a focus on creating interdisciplinary collaborative contexts guided by the threads that unite feminist, posthuman, queer and decolonial thinking. With this in mind, she hopes to develop an open space for residencies, artistic experiment, critical and speculative thinking near Bucharest, under the name Anexa Matka, which was already inaugurated with a transnational residency in summer 2023.