Familiar faces, fleeting expressions, and reflexive gestures from everyday life come together with a quiet sense of cohesion, yet retain the fragility intrinsic to ceramic, in an installation that seems to watch over us. Is this a case of pareidolia, the phenomenon through which the human mind perceives faces in the shapes of surrounding objects? Or is it simply the subtle thrill of feeling observed, within a game where the gaze doubles back on itself and moves across objects arranged in a non-linear composition?

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Not Cruel, Truthful, Liliana Basarab’s solo exhibition, welcomes the public with works that foreground the everyday dimension of her practice. It brings into focus routines recovered through a drifting gaze, one that shifts from what is expected to be seen toward the peripheral, toward underexplored social niches. Minor narratives, captured with contemplative irony along the Beijing-Bucharest-Paris axis, take form in the series People of… and People of… details. From fleeting moments on public transportation to the banal gesture of handling a phone, now a natural extension of the body, everything gravitates toward a register of the familiar. Even the series of masks, which claims no specific tradition, emerges from the humble process of molding egg cartons.

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A key element of the exhibition design that enhances the aura of the works is the use of mirrors, both as a structural support and as a surface of reflection. The exhibition’s title itself paraphrases a line from Sylvia Plath’s poem Mirror, evoking a surface incapable of lying. In contrast to the conventional vertical positioning of the mirror, which establishes a frontal dynamic of power, Liliana Basarab works horizontally, reconfiguring the act of looking into a downward movement toward the small narratives situated below eye level. The viewer is invited to bend, in an ambivalent bodily gesture, inhabited by the echo of the myth of Narcissus, and thus becomes part of this circuit of reflection.

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The material retains its consistency, yet the vividly glazed forms acquire a peculiar familiarity, akin to déjà-vu. They seem to respond to us, to tease us subtly, while also inviting a quiet sense of complicity. Ultimately, the exhibition does not confront the viewer, but draws them closer: to small gestures, to forgotten glances, to a form of humanity that, despite its tensions, preserves its capacity for self-recognition.

Liliana Basarab is a visual artist who lives and works in Bucharest. Her artistic practice has a strong social dimension and manifests itself through various media, such as ceramics, textiles, drawing, performance, participatory workshops, and video. Her works often address themes related to gender, identity, and social norms, using irony and subtle humor to question traditional symbols and cultural narratives. She is engaged with various forms of artistic organisations, from the Vector Association in Iași in the 2000s, to the Sofia Nădejde Awards Collective (2018–2022), and currently the Malmaison Studios.