On December 10, 2021, the opening of the exhibition took place Observing the roots, opened at the French Cultural Institute in Timișoara, which includes the works of the students of the second year master's painting, coordinated by the university lecturer. Dr. Popa Liliana.

The exhibition proposes works specially designed for this space, and talks about how certain social changes that have occurred with the pandemic change us and the way we relate to certain past situations/habits. 

wearing root with us, this perpetual process of (self)transplantation, proper to the nomadic condition (as emigrant, commuter, tourist, etc.), has defined us and transformed its social context, in the last decades, more than before. 

The conditioning of mobility, from the last almost two years, also most likely had an effect on the status root ours, perhaps creating a favorable framework for a process of probing/digging in depth.

Thus, the works in this exhibition analyze the cultural substratum, deeply rooted in the subconscious, with terrible but also transformative histories (Maxim Zaghidullin). Similarly, the underground, unseen connections, the fabrics of real (natural) or constructed (artificial) networks, which encompass us as if in a "big brain" (collective unconscious) (Raluca Anghel), as well as the relationship with our own origins, with the ancestors, with what we inherit and pass on transgenerationally, what is experienced/felt in/through our own body, independent or not of our will (Raluca Micula).

Focusing attention on intrusive interactions between us and ourselves with the outside/environment as an effect of rootedness on the surface ground (of our personality), because it is the level we feel closest to (Natalia Silaghi), it also causes approaches to reconfiguration/reevaluation of root (Ciprian Ciobanu).

The spatial intervention of the works and the order of their arrangement (inside the building, on the two floors, but also in the garden), proposes an interior-exterior route, through which the public is wanted to challenge them to discover them with each step.

The exhibition can be visited during: December 2021 - January 2022.

Participating students: Raluca Anghel, Ciprian Ciobanu, Cătălina Doțiu, Raluca Micula & Andreea Ioniță, Natalia Silaghi, Maxim Zaghidullin

Exhibition curated by university associate. Dr. Liliana Mercioiu Popa

Organizers: French Cultural Institute Timișoara, Faculty of Arts and Design - West University of Timișoara, Contemporary Visual Arts Research Center, T-act Association

Univ. Assoc. Dr. Liliana Popa