Denis Lixandru_
A curated exhibition of places, systems, obsessions, losses, symbols and iterations.
I grew up at 6 Gârleni Street, in Sector 6. Apartment blocks, neighbors, playgrounds, a Bucharest that knew everything about everyone, and a curiosity that refused to sit still.
I did not know then that an address could become the starting point for an entire personal archive. To me, it was just home.
I did ballroom dancing for six years. Competitions, awards, training camps, rehearsals, nerves, and the whole machinery around it.
Dancing taught me early that performance is not just talent. It is repetition. Presence. Rhythm. Attention to your partner. And discipline when nobody is applauding yet.
In my teenage years, I loved anime. Death Note, Jigoku Shoujo, Elfen Lied, and others. I started understanding a little Japanese, then bought books to study it more seriously.
I still do not understand why Japanese people prefer kanji when hiragana and katakana are obviously easier to read. I applied to Ion Creangă for the Japanese track, did not get in, and ended up in humanities, intensive English. I could have transferred, but I got attached to my classmates and to the group dynamic.
I studied International Economic Relations at ASE. The goal was deeply personal: I wanted to get away from my family.
I come from a family where abuse of all kinds was part of daily life and completely normalized. I envied classmates who came from outside Bucharest because university gave them a clear form of exit.
When you are born and raised in Bucharest, escaping becomes more complicated. I moved in with my partner when I was 21. It was the first decision that felt like independence.
While I was at university, I worked nights for CGS on the Sprint project, now T-Mobile. Days in class. Nights with the United States on the phone.
I handled everything related to online orders. Those Apple Store lines in the U.S. that were on TV? Guess who was answering the phone when something went wrong.
Flawless results took me to Malaysia, to conferences and exhibitions with the major players in the mobile market. All I can say is that Samsung did put on quite a show. Blackberry was absent. Maybe a sign.
After logistics came Oracle, where I entered cloud computing: PaaS, IaaS, renewals, and Customer Success.
Oracle was where I began to understand that technology is only half of the equation. The other half is people, processes, friction, and the way an organization adopts a product.
I moved to Belgium for a professional opportunity. Culturally, it was probably the most interesting observation exercise I have lived through.
Organizational structures were flat, but interactions were very tightly structured. Everything followed a script, if you knew what to observe. You thought the open space in Bucharest, in a building near Aurel Vlaicu, was too much and that you had no privacy? Haha. No.
Everyone could see what everyone else was doing. Transparency was the norm. Once you understood the system, you could adapt without losing your identity.
Personally, I learned to do more of what I like. I felt very alone. I went out. I wrote. Poems. Short stories. Anything. Then, a book: Glass City. But that is a separate chapter.
Beers with my former partner at De Planck, that boat on the water turned into a bar, with an excellent beer selection. The friends. The conversations. The life built there without realizing that one day I would have to part with it.
It hurt.
The apartment on Franklin Rooseveltlaan in Ghent, across from the park. The light falling over the cat stretched out beside the record player. The record spinning. Aurora, The Gods We Can Touch.
Amsterdam
Planned. Not executed.
I wanted Amsterdam. Not because Belgium wasn't enough. Because I was curious what came next.
The relationship dissolved. The company rightsized. Resources became finite.
So the exhibit never opened. At least not yet.
Psychotherapy, in general, and especially during the years I lived abroad, gave me language for things I was already feeling.
Living abroad amplifies everything: loneliness, homesickness, adaptation, loss, freedom, and the uncomfortable question: who am I when I am no longer performing for survival?
That is also where my current way of observing people, teams, dynamics, systems, attachments, fears, and protection mechanisms came from.
re_iterate was born out of reconstruction. Not as a glossy agency. Not as a performative startup. As a philosophy.
People, products, companies, relationships, and identity are built through iterations. Observe. Understand. Adjust. Repeat.
For the future, I want professional growth. I want to learn many practical, useful things that create impact in people's lives, whether we are talking about enterprise companies, SMBs, or end users.
I want to see myself at 40 in a role that fits like a glove. To build environments, structures, dynamics, and authentic friendships. No BS policy. A blend of Belgian corporate meets Eastern European spontaneity.
My Jungian archetype is the Helper. I am built to help people and I love that. I do not feel drained. I just forget about myself from time to time. Sometimes too much.
The Magician
Some people use tarot to predict the future. I use it to understand the forces already competing for control.
Every exhibition ends.
The work never does.
Current Exhibit / Denis Lixandru / Still Iterating_