Thought Experiment #1: Luchezar Boyadjiev. Public Space, Private Size
curated by Aksiniya Peycheva
22.06.2023 - 25.07.2023
In the exhibition Public Space, Private Size Luchezar Boyadjiev presents “projects” for monuments in public space, in which various material/semantic carriers are incorporated. The figure of the person for whom the monument is intended, is replaced by an animal, a rhetorical figure referring to specific connotations encoded in the larger context of the subject. The artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, for example, are represented as a sheep and a tiger, since Frida Kahlo is considered to be the “black sheep” of the 20th century art and Diego Rivera was a notorious womanizer. Both were Marxists by conviction, and so below these figures appears a Soviet booklet of the “Atlas of the World”. The spread seen by the viewer is the map of North America, where they lived and worked. At the base of their “monument” one can find a decapitated lead soldier toy from the artist’s childhood. It is a “Soviet lead soldier from WWII”. Humor creates other associations – Mother Teresa is presented as a “giraffe”, because according to the author “her face looks like one”; also, her birth name is Aneza Gonja Boyadziu, resembling the family name of Luchezar, which is Boyadjiev. That, according to the author, makes them “namesakes” because both names are etymologically rooted in the Ottoman (via Arabic) word “boya” which means “paint”. Jean-Claude’s monument has not one, but two horses “because she deserves it” being a “power girl in public space”, and other monuments refer to common clichés – such as the “proverbial blonde” who stands on a golden egg frying on a stove, or the “proverbial macho” – a ‘rooster’ equipped with an ax suspended above a mirror that aims to secure his narcissism. The elements in these objects are a part of the art world, as well as a part of the public space, but also a part of the personal life of the artist, and of the family-material environment, which carries a completely different energy in the sense of being imprints of everyday life. Such personal associations and references are most often found at the “base” of the monuments. These are incorporating bowls and plates used long before by the artist’s family. Thus, the public and personal aspects cross paths intentionally at the base of the “construction”, much like the scull (of Adam) seen in icons and murals at the basis of the Crucifixion, which subject has held a fascination for the artist ever since the late 80ies and the beginnings of his career and work.
The choice for animals to replace humans separates the viewer from the direct relation to the person and changes the overall situation in which the notion of interspecies justice is applied as means to reconsider social structures. The likely perception of such monuments in a real-life public space would most probably be allegorical, but in fact one can argue, that there is a literal reference about biological predisposition and how determining it is in a wider scope.
To what extent the personality, losing its natural a priori meaning, remains living in a conditional situation of time and is limited by the discourse of its presence? In this new system the biological factor becomes an optional condition. The individual is detached from their anthropocentric context and becomes a constituent part of a larger system in which the urban space is an emanation of the symbolic rather than the biological order of things. These models for monuments, at first glance intended to become real ones in the public environment, are in fact multi-component art objects that create a closed circle of meaningful parts related to a common play of extrapolated meanings.
Thought Experiment is a curatorial project which consists of conducting a series of informal conversations in which an artist talks to an expert in a given scientific field. The term “thought experiment” describes an experiment that tests the validity of a theory in search for a concrete (or in this case possibly abstract) answer, ultimately meant to be “dressed” in visual form at an exhibition. This creates a kind of an information flow that could influence (or not) the subsequent creation of an artistic product, or if the artwork is already produced, to help rethinking its purpose. The conversations take place following certain rules, which are completely conditional, having the sole purpose to put both parties in a state in which an exchange between them could be achieved – exchange of ideas, concepts, and lines of thought. In the context of the exhibition Public Space, Private Size Luchezar Boyadjiev spoke with the philosopher Margret Grebowicz.
Conversation between Luchezar Boyadjiev and Margret Grebowicz
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Luchezar Boyadjiev (b. 1957, Sofia, Bulgaria). Lives and works in Sofia. He graduated in Art History from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia in 1980. Founding member of ICA-Sofia. Artist and curator. He is interested in personal interpretations of social processes, in the interaction between private and public, in urban visuality and in the world today, situated between utopia and dystopia. His media are installation, photography, drawing, object, text, video and performative lectures.
Aksiniya Peycheva (b. 1990, Kyustendil, Bulgaria) lives and works in Sofia. She graduated in mural painting at the National Academy of Art Sofia., where she later received a PhD (2019) and is currently a lecturer, majoring in mural painting. She is a member of the Institute of Contemporary Art since 2021. The focus of her work is the process of “visual translation”, where she explores possible ways of moving pieces of information between different fields of knowledge. She often collaborates with scientists, and her projects are accompanied by a theoretical part, resulting from a long research on certain topics.
Margret Grebowicz (b. 1973, Lodz, Poland). Grew up in Texas. In 1994, she received a BA in German literature, philosophy and art history from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1998, she completed her Master of Arts degree at Emory University. In 2001, she received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Emory University. She is an associate professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Grabowicz is a philosopher known for her work in feminism, queer theory and radical democracy, and in recent years has been concerned with the philosophical aspects of our relationship to nature and coexistence with wild and domestic animals.
Art manager: Teodora Dzherekarova
The project is realised with the financial support of the National Culture Fund
PROGRAMME FOR RESTORATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF PRIVATE CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS
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