Gene Tanta, b. 1974 in Timisoara, RO, is a visual artist and poet living in the Midwest engaging dislocation politics and aesthetics. He paints memories overwritten by forgetfulness in thematic series about historical figures and auto-ethnographic portraits. Finding refuge in the Western art community, Tanta explores the muscle memory of his heart since, in communist Romania, the playing with meaning fine art demands would never have been possible. Tanta earned his MFA in Poetry from The Iowa's Writers' Workshop (2000) and PhD in Creative Writing from UW-Milwaukee (2009). Author, translator, and illustrator, his first poetry book is called Unusual Woods (BlazeVOX Books, 2010). He edited an anthology titled Romanian Poetry after Communism as the result of fieldwork completed across Romania during the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program (2012-13). His poems, translations, and visual art works have been published widely and exhibited nationally and internationally.