This abrupt imperative rings out like an accusation. Do what, exactly? And who is speaking? What’s happening here? “Here” is the symbolic heart of state power: the base of Parliament (once the headquarters of the communist party), the Council of Ministers, and the Presidency – a triangle of authority. It’s also the site of the ancient agora, once a place where citizens voiced their rights and expressed their will. Today, it’s a stage. “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce,” said Marx. Whether that’s true is up for debate, but the farce is plain to see.
The stage is dynamic; the cast, ever-changing. It ranges from one-man livestreams railing against the Illuminati, to traveling protest troupes on buses, peaceful demonstrations, paid agitators, hate-you-priceless protestors, and frightened militant mobs. A restless crowd swirls around a neoclassical mastodon – the building of power. It remains untouchable, like something out of Kafka. Inward-facing and emotionless, it stands like a sclerotic general in full regalia, gazing the West. Is power, like its architecture, inert and self-contained?
Kalin Serapionov confronts this image of power – deconstructing it until the oppressive colossus begins to dissolve. He starts by documenting the siteand using photographs of protests from his personal archive. Through digital manipulation, he inverts the images into negatives and breaks them down into delaminated contours. The building is drained of mass and volume, its once-firm lines now fluttering like a mirage. What once felt immovable begins to tremble.
The result is not one image, but many – layered, ghostly, fluid. Space itself bends and folds. One can get lost in these visual mazes, drawn into a realm that feels at once intimate and illusory. The atmosphere is soft, even sensual – boudoir-like in its textures – but there is always the sense that we are somewhere backstage, but not where the action is meant to happen. And then, that commanding phrase strikes us again: What are you doing here? Do you have anything to do? Do you belong? As citizens, we seem increasingly unsure – confused, even – about how to demand rights that keep slipping away. Can we claim them here, on this historical stage? Or are we just players in the farce of fate?
Text Vera Mlechevska
*Installation views from Gallery Octopus, Sofia, June 2025
