TRISTESSE (Fallout at the Soft Rocks) 

2024

installation view with video still overlay

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The title of this collection of works evokes to a nostalgic sadness for something which has not happened yet — a counterfactual fallout at the Soft Rocks. Referred to by the artist as her “home at the end of the world”, the Soft Rocks (Меките Скали) are volcanic formations located at the southmost part of the Bulgarian coastline, whose mysteriously smooth surfaces have been shaped by ancient lava flows and gradual sea erosion.

Imagining what the area may look like hundreds of thousands of years in the future she glimpses an evaporated sea and rocks no longer softened by the waves.

 

“I see cracks in a foundation which once felt timeless.”

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Alluding to the deep timeline of the geological relationships which develop by law of planetary equilibrium, each of these pieces hints at the disruption of such a balanced state by human interference. Found CCTV footage of daily human activity ‘faded’ to pale cyan like an old sun-soaked poster; the ethereal pixel formations of a cracked liquid crystal display; phones as broken lumps of matter becoming absorbed by their own internal chemical substance. Finally, a ‘geiger counter’ which shifts the idea of radioactive detection within the environment by instead reacting to the motion of the people in its vicinity.