There is no word for patronizing in Romanian. I grew up feeling the tone before I could name it—the way affection could slip into control, or how care could arrive laced with humiliation. When language fails you, the body fills in the rest.

These works try to surface those everyday commands and half-jokes that shaped me. Painted, stenciled, sprayed, or lifted from walls and workshops in Timișoara, each phrase carries that double edge of warmth and discipline, love and diminishment.

By giving them form, I’m trying to understand them.
By naming them, I’m trying to change their power.