Seeking Glory
Dessislava Terzieva at Untiled Gallery,Berlin
April 28, 2023

Our outer world and inner world share a space called the self whose persona and ego are employed to insulate our dark shadows and anima. It is understood that through moments of ego death, an investigation of our true selves can begin, which would ultimately be realized through integration of these various conscious and unconscious elements. The conceptual essence of an artist's practice can provoke critics to utilize theories like this in an effort to answer questions. Intentionally or unintentionally, this frames for us a phenomenon that is taking place where the artist is making the work while the work is making the artist, activated through any awareness of self-realization that can come from the process of creating. Autobiographical work is particularly ripe in this way. It assumes an intentional path of reflection as if the maker is an anthropologist of themselves.

The work of Dessislava Terzieva could be described as a continual expression of behaviors and characteristics inherited from previous familial generations. Her heritage is and always has been inseparable from her work as an artist, presented in reverence for the widely shared tendencies of those who have lived under communist reign. Terzieva shows us that the influence of scarcity on a lifestyle can be perpetuated even after deemed unnecessary, becoming, in a way, a fashion that represents these experiences.

Seeking Glory asks what there is to be found behind the veil that presents as a collective identity. The exhibition of sculptures standing on the ground, hanging from the ceiling and on the wall apply domestic habits that her family adopted as a creative byproduct of material insufficiency. Mops made from old clothes immortalize past lives. Reflections in mop buckets remind her of where she came from. Discarded cell phones now act as frames for conversations. Renounced wallets now act as frames for photographs.

The artist embodies this history while also considering its roots in a deep hunger for things and a real fear for the future. Referencing Slavenka Drakulic's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, it is evident that the scarcity mentality is one that has been potentially permanently impressed upon by lack and an innovativeness surrounding that. Interestingly, the tendency to hold on tight to even the most disposable of items comes in contrast to another aspect of such a society, migration. The severing of a root in order to facilitate the liberating movement of peoples from their homeland, relinquishing ownership and surrendering to the future without control, is an act that has been familiar to Terzieva since an early age. But most recently, she has actively embraced the lifestyle of transience. Errantry, Édouard Glissant's philosophy of wandering with a sacred motivation suggests that to live an errant lifestyle requires “a lack of totalitarian roots” in order to make space for the “rhizomatic roots” to spread freely and constantly. Seeking Glory, the title coming from a direct translation of the artist's name, Dessislava, is a reflection and an inquiry. This perpetual search is also reflected in this show through the use of materials from her many recent hometowns including Detroit, Mexico City, and Sofia, Bulgaria. The transformative nature of such an effort becomes so due to constant negotiation of identity in relation to where she currently is; the ultimate ego-death.

text by Ashley Cook

Heart of Gold, 2023
Mexican peso, Bulgarian lev, USD, Euros, Adidas zipper, vitamin D, tic tacs, Advil, earring, candy wrapper, tin container
10 x 10 x 2

The Nostalgic is Never a Native But a Displaced Person Who Meditates Between the Local and the Universal, 2023
tin container, cell phone, resin, Lufthansa plane ticket, map, matchbox, make-up, perfume, martenitza, Bulgarian coin, earring, ear plugs

20 x 20 x 12

The Eternal Question: where to?, 2023
tin container, Dollar bill, Marlboro Lights, cell phone, acrylic paint, inlet print, resin, jewelry, make-up concealer, wrapping paper, CDMX public transportation card, Sofia tram tiicet, matchbox, film container

22 x 14 x 12

The Idea is To Remain in a State of Constant Departure While Always Arriving, 2023
Coat rack, purse, key chain, clothing, resin, plastic bags, secrets
110 x 86 x 27

U up?, 2023
cell phone, acrylic, inkjet print, resin
15 x 7 x 1