I Heard a Flutter of wings At The Window

I heard a flutter of wings at the window. Site-specific installation. 2021

Joint project by Sophia Grancharova, Marta Djourina and Maria Nalbantova

The project started with an invitation from Ina Kancheva to the three finalists for the National Visual Arts Scholarship “Reaching for the Stars” to work together as a group and co-artists in creating a unified piece of work. Named “I HEARD A FLUTTER OF WINGS AT THE WINDOW”, the project is a conversation taking us through the transient fields of sleep. The amorphousness of sleep as a metaphor for memories and recollection.

The conversations between the young artists started during the current pandemic and are influenced by isolation where reality seemingly begins to change shape, resulting in a strong sense of otherworldliness, with blurred lines between wakefulness and sleep. This change raised many questions and suggested that the boundaries between the two are widening, with reality spilling over into sleep and vice versa.

The exhibition shows a complete installation where the individual positions of each artist merge into a common language. The shared creative process and the exchange of ideas have created a coherent environment. The three artists – Sophia Grancharova, Marta Djourina and Maria Nalbantova – provoke conversations about the sleep state and use it as a tool to plant suggestions. They push us in different directions to reach different interpretations.

The oxymoron, encoded in the concept of controlled sleep where we wake up soon after to stimulate the flow of our creative energy, is sealed in the glass material. Created from sand, glass carries within an eternal impermanence. Its fragility is associated with the inability to remember everything we dream.

Flashes of memories, dreams and their interpretations. If we tell a story countless times, does it always stay the same? How do our memories work? What appears in our dreams? Engraved or lacquered pieces of glass that appear blank at first glance. Look closely, however, and you will see texts and drawings. Pieces of stories and dreams, paragraphs from a dream diary and out-of-context light drawings detached are all encoded in the shadows.

The apparent emptiness in the space involves anyone who moves through it, even if just via the shadow cast by their body. The viewer’s movements are guided by light and shadow. The exhibition creates a space where the audience is invited to discover almost invisible matter existing in the physical state of half-sleep.

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The exhibition is organised by the Cultural Perspectives Foundation in partnership with the Structura Gallery. The project is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Sofia Municipality.

Partners: Generali Bulgaria, Ogilvy, Ligna, ALTO, Dolce Gusto Bulgaria, The Smarts

Media partners: Culture Portal, Bulgaria Boulevard, BNR, fakti.bg

Images