Published May 13, 2019
Installation view from the room The House of Moonlight
It was an honor to be invited to participate in an exhibition in Varna, Bulgaria. I received support to travel there from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant in the spring of 2019. The opportunity to discover a city I knew nothing about and engage with its art community was to my good fortune, an exhilarating experience. My week was spent in and out of the Boris Georgiev City Art Gallery mounting the exhibition entitled Sie machen was sie wollen (They do what they want). My featured sculpture Untitled (foot cast) 2007 is a 12-inch tall plaster form covered in salt crystals. This experience of presenting my work in a large constellation of established and emerging artists in Bulgaria was transformational. I thought about the space-time continuum, and about how each culture has a different take on what contemporary art means.
Melissa Hopson, Untitled (foot cast) 2007, plaster and alum crystals, 13”x12”x5”in
The full moon shone on my flight to Europe from Indianapolis that landed on Tsvetnitsa (Flower Day), a Palm Sunday name day celebration in Bulgaria. Before arrival, I memorized some common Bulgarian phrases and read the novels Bai Ganyo: Incredible Tales of a Modern Bulgarian by Aleko Konstantinov and Under the Yoke by Ivan Vasov. I also read about Bulgaria’s communist Russian occupation until 1989. I read that Bulgaria is the poorest country in Europe. And I learned about the Bulgarian rescue of Indigenous Jews during the second world war. As I explored Bulgaria through this fascinating background, and through the exhibition, I couldn’t help but notice the countries particularities compared to Western culture. I felt solidarity with many of the beautiful brown-eyed faces I met there, and with the stray animals, underkept architecture, and lush greenery that reminded me of my childhood. Bulgaria, like every other country, is known for its arts and crafts traditions seen in textiles, dance, pottery, and cheese. The contemporary art scene in Varna seems to be still fighting for more acceptance.
I met with the exhibition organizers and artists Ruslan Daskalov (Stara Zagora, Bulgaria) and Lukas Schmenger (Filderstadt, Germany) at the gallery. We know each other from studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy years before. Lukas and Ruslan explained why they chose an exhibition title that references an earlier 1986 exhibition in Sofia. That decade, Varna experienced its contemporary art renaissance. The Gallery of UBA “Shipka 6" hosted the earlier exhibition during the Perestroika movement. The government shut down the exhibition a week after it opened and destroyed the printed catalogs. That exhibition featured dozens of influential contemporary artists such as Dokupil, Rosemarie Trockel, and Walter Dahn. Both exhibitions presented Rheinland and Bulgarian contemporary artists working in a wide range of media and approaches across generations.
Installation view from the room The House of Nature.
For the current exhibition, Lukas and Ruslan chose curatorial concepts in four rooms: “The house of moonlight”, “The house of her”, “The house of infinite joy”, and “The house of nature”. Twenty-seven artists and artworks filled rooms on the main floor of the Boris Georgiev Art Gallery. Participating artists Julan Kirchner and Philip Seibel flew in from Greece and London to mount the exhibition with the gallery’s team and attend the opening. The largest room, “The house of moonlight” built by Ruslan is where I spent the majority of my time with my sculpture positioned on the floor of the entryway. Other works in the room depicted animal and human figures. The artists and curatorial team EXC built a large-scale black and white video projection in “The house of her”. Institut für Bienenzucht built “The house of infinite joy,” a life-sized cardboard rendition of a gallery composed of two-dimensional works from various artists. Finally, Melange Köln built a multimedia floor installation in “The house of nature”. We were pleased that television channels and radio hosts took interest in the exhibition and interviewed us in the gallery. During the week, I was fascinated with how the subject matter of the exhibition reflected so much of the city.
The tactility of Varna’s aged architecture and the earthy colors of the buildings reminded me of the material expressions in my sculpture. Walking through a city still untouched by over-commercialization, I saw tattered concrete overhangs that I wanted to reach out and grab. The resonant sound of the Bulgarian language made me think of the color indigo. An hour spent at a dressmaker in the seemingly derelict housing projects of Mladost felt neither dangerous nor threatening as it might back home. In the neighborhood of Odessos, we walked past excavation sites and vacant ruins ruled by sleepy feral cats and opportunistic seagulls. One evening with the gallery technicians, Pavel and Tsvetan we sat outside the gallery in the lush, overgrown sculpture garden where I learned about Bulgarian artists Milko Bozhkov, Kiril Shivarov, and Vanko Urumov over generously poured glasses of apricot rakia. I was surprised and enticed by so many generous acts of kindness. One morning a cashier at the supermarket added three Easter podarŭtsi (gifts) to my grocery bag. At the opening, two friendly local women I met in town gave me two fresh-cut Bulgarian roses, postcards, and muskal (attar of roses). Earlier that week one of them, Denitsa showed me Varna’s historical landmarks: Ivan Kovatchev’s sun watch and the Draski boat. I was impressed with the massive concrete tide breakers lining the shore at Port Varna. I learned from her that the Black Sea is named after its turbulent nature, not its color. From these experiences, I thought that the silence that language barriers create provides opportunities for new exchanges, just as contemporary art does.
Installation view from The House of Her.
The nightly seafood spreads at Nord restaurant and the “Russian Standard Vodka” at Cubo by the sea could not pacify my jet lagged sleeplessness, and racing thoughts about the exhibition. I was magically cast out of my eighth floor apartment onto Vasil Drumev into Varna’s Sea Garden park. On a midnight stroll, a low rhythmic song of a bird stopped me in my path and I sat listening on a park swing peering at the night sky. The strong scent of animal was heavy in my nose. And my natural instincts were triggered when I heard a rustling coming from behind the wall I sat next to. The breathing and gnashing of a wild animal brought me to my feet, and a majestic growl sent me screaming into the empty streets. Looking back for signs of my pursuer, I realized that the roars fading behind me were from the caged lion at the zoo. With my adrenaline up, I waited safely indoors until sunrise and walked to the beach. A pack of five large stray dogs escorted me along the way. Their presence was less threatening than the confined one I ran from just hours before. I thought about how being an artist feels similar to being a caged animal, and how this primal energy inside my body releases itself through the creative process.
Installation view from the interior room, The House of Infinite Joy.
Installation view from the interior room, The House of Infinite Joy.
This exhibition experience in Varna felt like many delicate moments of time overlapping at once. Living in Indianapolis with easy access to materials and space, I’m unaware of the challenges artists face elsewhere. In Varna, I listened to artists and curators express a need for more contemporary art research. At dinner, I spoke with a local artist and Professor Vladimir Ivanov about the catalog from the 1986 exhibition that he salvaged and presented that night at the opening. We discussed our work, Varna’s petrified forest, Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstract and Empathy essay, and the animals between land and sea over fish soup, and more rakia. We concluded that the current exhibition is more of a celebration of cultural progress than a researched investigation. Varna’s untamed cityscape and placid sea environment reminded me of art’s true purpose. I wished for my children to have this honorable experience of Bulgaria one day and of the world. On the way to the Varna airport my cab driver, Illian, talked to me about Bulgaria and suggested that I should feel language instead of thinking about it when learning. My main takeaway from Varna’s art community and from the exhibition is to live and perceive the present rather than resign to the problems of the past.
Melissa Hopson
Pobiti Kamani, The Petrified Forrest outside Varna