Who have we been
Baza award exhibition
Sofia city art gallery
curated by Daniela Radeva
2019
Who have we been is an exploration of a traumatic early childhood memory, told in five parts: two audio stories, four paintings, a sculpture one enters to listen to music, and a video. The work was created for my nomination for the Baza Award for Contemporary Art.
A few years ago, after a panic attack, I recovered a forgotten memory from kindergarten - of a carer who used the threat of making us undress in front of everyone as punishment. The memory arrived incomplete, like shrapnel from an old explosion. I began tracing its edges, drawn to the magnetism of this terrible fragment. For over a year I drew, wrote, and tried to speak it, realizing how language resists when speech becomes unbearable.
I met others who had been there, children as I was then. I tried to return to the kindergarten to record, but could not cross the street - so I recorded from the pavement opposite. Later, I made a video about someone else’s memories of the same event, and the futility of trying to repair the past.
Throughout, I thought of broilki - Bulgarian children’s rhymes filled with hidden violence, prejudice, and desire. I went under the table, searching for memory in small spaces, places where forgotten dreams might still linger.
This project speaks of the darkness of childhood, a time when we are open like an ear - utterly defenceless, even to words. An ear cannot choose to close.
Video still