Irene Balia’s painting unfolds as a quiet reversal: standing before her canvases, the viewer who believes they are observing the work finds themselves observed in turn. Drawn with an almost obsessive precision in graphite, her figures — often portraits of relatives or of the artist herself — hold static, sometimes vacant expressions, suspended in a space outside time. Human bodies dissolve into landscape, animals stand immobile, raindrops hang in the air. The objectivity of the drawing collides with the subjectivity of the subject, producing scenes that resemble photographs more than paintings, marked by a sustained emotional restraint and by a register that touches Metaphysical painting and Magical Realism. More recent canvases have moved towards marine and outdoor settings, sustaining the same atmosphere of permanent, palpable waiting. She graduated in painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Sassari in 2009. She was a finalist for the CO.CO.CO. Contemporary Contest Como (2013), the Premio Michetti (2013) and the Premio Lissone (2014). Her work was included in *Nuova Pittura Italiana*, the project conceived by Enzo Cannaviello at Studio d’Arte Cannaviello in Milan and presented in Italy and abroad. In 2017 she received her first public commission for the Cittadella degli Archivi in Milan; in 2020 she took part in the international residency programme of the Fondazione MACC in Calasetta and in *Back_Up – Giovane arte in Sardegna* at the Museo Nivola in Orani. She lives and works in Milan.