The exhibition and we thought we’d last forever brings to the public's attention an artistic and scientific exploration of humanity's fragility, our place in the universe, and the way in which technological and cultural history intertwines with speculative imagination. Artist and engineer Cosmin Haiaș takes on the role of mediator between seemingly opposing worlds: the laboratory and the studio, physical theory and poetic intuition, cutting-edge science and visual culture.

The exhibition is structured around two major conceptual landmarks from contemporary physics and philosophy: the Fermi paradox and the Great Filter theory. In the first room, the simple but disturbing question, “Where is everyone?” becomes a starting point for a reflection on absence and expectation. If the universe is so vast, why haven't we encountered any other civilizations? Haiaș responds to this dilemma with a visual and material montage that brings together historical objects, scientific instruments, and elements reconfigured through present-day technologies. His assemblages—references to Brâncuși's emblematic works “The Endless Column” and “The Kiss“,  alongside a series of televisions—historical witnesses to the events of the middle of the last century, “teleported” into the zeitgeist of our days, do not propose definitive answers, but rather construct a space of interrogation, where visitors are invited to confront their own assumptions about life, knowledge, and otherness.

The second room addresses the Great Filter hypothesis, according to which a civilization must go through a series of critical stages in order to reach the cosmic level of exploration and become an extraterrestrial civilization. If humanity has already stopped at the last threshold, it means that we are doomed to self-destruction. Haiaș transforms this theory into an artistic language that combines installations, reused objects, and hybrid structures, reconfigured with the help of the latest technologies. The result is a kind of archaeology of the future, where the vestiges of material culture meet speculative simulations of what may follow.

In this sense, the exhibition becomes more than a discourse on science, art, or life; it is also a cultural and political reflection. Fragments of historical and scientific objects, placed in constant dialogue with contemporary visual language, suggest the tension between collective memory and technological impulse. In a world marked by ecological, social, and technological crises, the questions raised by Haiaș directly touch on the present: are we facing our own limits as a species, or do we still have a chance to overcome the last filter?

What sets Haiaș's practice apart is the way in which art and engineering are not mutually exclusive, but rather reinforce each other. The artist treats each work as an experiment, but also as a poetic message, proposing a dialectic between the rational and the imaginary. This transdisciplinary approach makes the exhibition not only a visual commentary, but also a platform for reflection, where visitors can directly experience the compression of historical and scientific time: past, present, and future overlapping in a single experience.

And we thought we’d last forever thus functions as a warning, a “quantum entanglement,” and a meditation. It is a call for lucidity, but also an invitation to imagination. Through his works, Cosmin Haiaș challenges us to look beyond the comfort of the present and ask ourselves what it means to endure, as individuals, as a species, and as a civilization. At a historic moment marked by multiple fragilities, the exhibition at META Spațiu confronts us with a fundamental question: if we fail to pass the last filter, what kind of traces will we leave behind?

Cosmin Haiaș

Cosmin Haiaș (RO), born in 1968 in Oradea, Romania, is an artist who combines the world of art with technology. With a background in automation engineering (a graduate of the Polytechnic University of Timișoara), Haiaș also holds a PhD in visual arts.

Cosmin's artistic practice stands out through a fusion of engineering and art, reflecting an interdisciplinary and innovative approach. This combination supports a dynamic vision of creation, where constant exploration and transformation are essential. Since childhood, Cosmin has demonstrated a propensity for artistic and technical experiments, associating oil painting with projects such as building rockets from improvised materials. These early endeavors laid the foundation for a career centered on the interaction between technology, art, and science.