Fish, Birds, Butterflies and Fish Again
14.11.2023 - 18.11.2023
It seems to me that I will always be happy where I am not.
Charles Baudelaire
The exhibition presents a video installation consisting of 6 screenings created between 2019-2023: Love Story, Fish, Birds, Butterflies, Fish, Bear.
Continuing her creative pursuits in recent years, the artist combines documents, historical facts and concrete images with fairytale narratives, pictorial impressions and visual metaphors.
In the central video, a fictional story unfolds, but it could also be real. The characters are unlikely to be the same, but their destinies are recognizable. Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova does not hesitate to delve into history, and to look at the present through its prism and lessons. Obviously, for her there is no boundary between past and present. And no matter how much we try to turn our backs on one or the other, they both unwaveringly grip us.
The central video, in which the viewer is guided by the artist’s voice in addition to the vision, is surrounded by four projections. They correspond to all four seasons and remind us the cyclical nature of life and the inexorable passage of time.
The last almost static video can be taken as a symbolic ending, in which a ray of sunshine slowly passes through the archive photo – a momentary revival or a glimpse of lasting hope.
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Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova was born in 1960. She is author of videos, installations, actions, objects. She works with paper, tin, nails, spoons, soap, sand, ice, ice cream, cotton candy. In the recent years she uses camera as her main tool. Her more important solo exhibitions are: “On the kitchen table”, Little Bird Place, Sofia (2020); “How are you?”, Structura Gallery, Sofia (2019); “Ctrl+Z”, Arosita Gallery, Sofia (2016); “Frames”, Sofia City Art Gallery (2013); “eco stories”, The Warehouse, Sofia (2011); “Globally and long term the situation is positive”, Sofia City Art Gallery (2009); “Moderate optimism”, 9, 6 September St., Sofia (2008); “Sofia Lions”, Artists’ Association fabs, Warsaw (2006) and Goethe-Institut, Sofia (2005); “Vanitas”, Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan (2004). In 2009 she won the Gaudenz B. Ruff prize.
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