BAW is now over 😢
Thank you for spending four days offline with us. See you next year! ☀️
09-12 July 2026 INTERSECTIONS
A festival for everyone who loves the analog arts, from sight to sound and everything in between.
Join us under the burning hot July sky for four days of keeping it offline: exhibitions, workshops, concerts, talks, books, games, bikes, friends. Worth leaving the house for!
This year is about Intersections: the dialogue between our past and future selves, the space we find ourselves in-between, and the unexpected ways they meet. Read the festival statement
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EXHIBITIONDIMENSIONS OF US - LIA ȘTEFĂNESCU
Dimensions of Us
LIA ȘTEFĂNESCU
Lia’s practice explores memory, family, and the passage of time through analogue photography and alternative photographic processes. Working primarily with black-and-white film, lith printing, caffenol, and other experimental darkroom techniques, she is interested in the material qualities of photography and the ways in which images can reflect the instability of memory itself.
Through her work, Lia explores how photographs can function not as fixed records of the past, but as living objects that continue to change meaning over time.
In this exhibition, Lia takes a deeper dive into her past and present by juxtaposing images of her sisters and herself, photographs of the home where she grew up, and images made throughout different stages of her life. At the center of the exhibition is an abstract photograph created through analogue superimposition, bringing together fragments of her sisters and herself into a single image.
The works are arranged so that their meanings shift from individual moments into a shared experience. What begins as a personal archive gradually becomes an exploration of connection: between siblings, between generations, and between past and present selves. Through these gestures, she celebrates the bonds that shape her and reflects on the fragile nature of memory. Time may be the only constant, and eventually all things fade, yet there is no better moment to appreciate life as it exists than now.
Memory and the mind’s ability to construct, alter, and sometimes erase reality have become recurring concerns in Lia’s practice. Working with black-and-white film and alternative printing processes such as lith printing and caffenol, she embraces chemical unpredictability as part of the image-making process. Distortion, absence, and decay become visual manifestations of how memories transform over time.
Alongside the photographic works, the exhibition includes an interactive installation composed of post-it notes layered over a family image. Visitors are invited to remove and reposition the notes, gradually revealing an older photograph concealed beneath. Through this act of uncovering, the work reflects the way memories emerge, disappear, and are continually rewritten.
This exhibition is dedicated first to Lia’s family, especially her sisters, who have accompanied her through every stage of life and whose presence has profoundly shaped who she is. It is also dedicated to everyone who must balance the demands of everyday life while still finding space to pursue what they love. Rather than writing in a journal, she has allowed these images to carry the reflections, emotions, and questions that accompany her.
The exhibition continues a personal exploration that began in earlier projects such as In Between Lost Worlds and Fragments of the Past, works that focused on loss, mortality, and the traces left behind by those we love. Here, however, she seeks not only to mourn what has disappeared but also to blur the boundaries between what remains and what continues to live within us. Inspired by Agnès Varda’s concept of the “camera-pen,” David Hockney’s photographic constructions, and Michael Duane’s use of photography as a form of journaling, she approaches the photographic image as both a record and a living space for memory.