The National Museum of Art Timișoara and Humanitas Publishing House invite you on April 18, 2024, from 𝐨𝐫𝐚 𝟏8:𝟎, at 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐣𝐮𝐥 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐳𝐢𝐭̦𝐢𝐞𝐢 𝐝𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐢𝐞 and the launch of the volume 𝑨𝒎 𝒇𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒍𝒂 𝒄𝒂𝒑𝒂̆𝒕𝒖𝒍 𝒍𝒖𝒎𝒊𝒊 by 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐮 𝐒𝐭ă𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐮. Melania Cincea and Cristian Tzecu will participate – together with the author. The exhibition is curated by Roxana Lăpădat and Andreea Sandu and is based on the homonymous volume by Liviu Stănescu, published by Editura Humanitas in 2023.

“The traveler is good on the road. But he is equally at home as a storyteller, a tuner of words and creator of worlds. Liviu Stănescu is a collector of states, he lives to travel and travels to feel. His travels do not create the framework for objective documentation, but are the occasion for introspection and deeply personal searches. And when the image is added to the word, Liviu Stănescu’s worlds become an experience in themselves, transforming the reader-viewer into a traveler-seer. This is how we imagined this photography exhibition, as an experience, a journey through the worlds and experiences of Liviu Stănescu, as an adventure in the footsteps of his footsteps, on paths sometimes completely unknown, sometimes intuited or even recognizable. The emotional maps designed by Liviu Stănescu will guide you to the end of the world… or to the end of a world that will open up to others… “explain the two curators, Roxana Lăpădat and Andreea Sandu (Galateca Gallery of Contemporary Art and Design).

Liviu Stănescu has traveled the length and breadth of the Earth: 111 countries have opened their doors to him so far, but he has plenty of doors to knock on. He’s been to Ushuaia, Cape Town, Cabo da Roca, Tonga, Easter Island, the Galapagos Islands and the South Pole, among others. In his travels, he lived through the great earthquake in Nepal, measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale, the one in India, measuring just 7.4, and the first day of the civil war in Kenya; he fell ill with typhoid fever in Iran and only luck helped him escape unharmed. Many of these adventures can be found in the pages of his books, as well as in the photographs on show for the first time in an exhibition.

“I am just a simple vagabond, sniffing the deep footprints left behind by Panait Istrati or Walt Whithman. I am a wanderer like no other, a wanderer who likes to wander the paths of the world and less to run along the boulevards of the great metropolises. I am also a great teleleu who yawns at a colorful pebble hidden beneath the sole of my boot as much as I yawn at the temples created by the greatest living artist – Nature. I’m a wanderer who not once, carried away by the tide, had no idea where he was and what nothingness he was looking for on those unblazed coclaves. Haimana am I? Well, how else, as long as it is only the road to the unknown that tempts me to walk it! And I’m always wandering and wandering and wandering, because that’s the only way, without a specific target, I know that the unseen will wink at me. A haihuist, in a word!” – self-describes the traveler, author and photographer Liviu Stănescu.

His book – “I was at the end of the world” – was in the top 10 bestsellers of Humanitas Publishing House at Bookfest Bucharest 2023, as well as in December 2023.

The eponymous exhibition can be visited from April 17-28, 2024, at the National Museum of Art Timisoara, Gallery L (Unirii Square no. 1).