installation
drawings, objects,
texts, photographs,
collages, etc. made at various times from the life of the artist ranging from 1981-1983 and 1986 (while living in New York), to 1991-1992 and the beginning of his career in Sofia
dimensions variable
Installation view: “Medical Check-up”, Club of the (eternally) Young Artist; 6 Shipka St. Gallery, Sofia. February 1992
The early 1990s saw the influx of a lot of new and fancy things in the life and public space of ex-Socialist Bulgaria. Top among these were English language and visual pornography. The new notion of “freedom” was taken literally and extremely liberally to mean “anything goes”. You were now “IN” and/or “OUT” of Bulgaria at the same time; you were “IN” and/or “OUT” of Bulgarian language, visual culture, and collapsing notions of public code of conduct, etc. You were also “IN” and/or “OUT” of the whole world. Or so it seemed at the time.
The “TOEFL” installation plays with the notion of a simulated “test” for the visual and language literacy of new audiences as to the use of these “new-comers”. The title refers to TOEFL – Test of English as a Foreign Language, which each individual hoping to study or work in the USA must take convincingly enough.
In view of my own life/work background with regard to the English language and visual culture of the USA – which were the top source for imitation in Bulgaria at the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I incorporated bits and pieces in this installation that I had made as far back as 1981-83 and 1986 (such as for instance, the 2 horrible self-portraits from my first months in New York City back in the spring of 1981). The installation refers to the adoption of visual matrix from adult magazines and their specific gender constructs, and also to language constructs that are hard to translate from Bulgarian into English and vice versa especially some famous modern art dictums that have high currency ratings in the West but were of little use in the ex-Soviet bloc.