National Salon of Contemporary Art in Bucharest

Following the exhibition Cultural Nomads, presented by Art Project Depot at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Berlin during Berlin Art Week, the platform presented a selection from the Herbarium collection at the invitation of the National Salon of Contemporary Art in Bucharest. This is the seventh edition of the prestigious forum, which traditionally presents Romanian artists from different generations. Among the many exhibitions located in various spaces in the capital and in the National Gallery of Romania, foreign exhibitions from Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary will participate for the first time.

The exhibition prepared for SNAC at the Mobius Gallery included boxes by Janire Echebarria de Dios, Kai Masayuki, Gönül Nuhoglu, Aksinia Peicheva, Berndnaut Smilde, and Sofia Dimova. Their works embody the diversity of national identities and generations united in the collection and create a field for dialogue between themes and ideas born from the richness of visual languages in contemporary art.

S.O.S (2021) Janire Echebarria de Dios began her project on March 13, 2020 – the first day of restrictions related to the COVID epidemic in Sofia, where she is an Erasmus scholarship holder at the National Academy of Arts. Her work is an investigation through recording the exact times when she hears ambulances from the nearby hospital. Her experience in Bulgaria allows her to see the cultural value of weaving and its possibilities for artistic expression. She focuses her attention on the process rather than the aesthetic finish, so it is a completely intuitive action, without focus on technique. With this work, she calls for a return to the essence of human beings – to hear the need for help and to realize the delicate thread of life embodied in the red thread. Through the universal language of digital codes, the following are shown: 328 hours, 328 stories, 328 deaths, or 328 lives, as well as those she continues to record to this day.

Kai Masayuki's "Whisper of the Earth" (2020) presents an authorial technique related to a theme he has been developing since 1980: "The idea of the atom, the earth, and the universe through creations in collaboration with the great nature. The sun, rain, wind, earth, sea, snow, time, and space – all are closely related to this series of artworks."
The cotton cloth used for the object in the box is spread out on the ground and buried. It is dug up after 3 months to 1 year using a technique used in archaeological excavations. The excavated fabric is washed and sterilized in the sun, then glued onto a new textile canvas and sewn with a sewing machine using strong thread.

Gönül Nuhoglu uses as starting point for "Amusement Park" (2021) the theories of German philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel, according to whom "Becoming a rhinoceros is a transformation rather than a change. Change can be reversed – a person can change again; but transformation is irreversible." The artist has been creating works featuring the image of a rhinoceros since 2009, based on Simmel's essay entitled "The Metropolis and Mental Life." Through various media, they present a detailed account of life in big cities and the problems of alienation of urban dwellers. The urban actor in this series, which refers to indifference, is depicted as a cold, heavy, thick-skinned rhinoceros. This is the moment when the urban individual strives to be measured in monetary terms and decides to exclude his human perceptions, accepting hopelessness as a behavior and thus inevitably surrendering to the transforming power of the system.

"When You Look at the Stars, You See the Past" (2021) by Aksiniya Peicheva presents a cross-section of a moment in airspace. The box, pre-filled with a microbiological culture medium, collects microorganisms found in the air. After being left open for a few minutes, it is sealed, and the microorganisms begin to grow.
After a few days, they form an abstract picture that contains visual information reflecting life in the air at that particular moment. According to a study published in 2009, the organization of constellations in the starry sky can be explained by various methods of computer geometry, which connect a random group of points according to certain rules. Using the logic of the study, Delaunay triangulation is used to transform the colonies of bacteria into a star map composed of different groups of constellations. In this way, the project attempts to search for hidden information – to "dissect" a moment in space-time.

Berndnaut Smilde's "Kammerspiele" (2022) presents romantic images from colorful postcards, partially obscured by miniature tiles. An allusion to exotic places and times gone by, they simultaneously refer to parts of the interior space. The viewer's gaze constantly shifts between "now" (functionality and architecture) and "elsewhere" (desire or nostalgia). The name "Kammerspiel" can be translated as "living room theater" – placed here between images of missing places, missing events, and present architecture and forms.
"I like the idea of desire in a postcard. The postcards we know today appeared in the early 1900s. Provided that the word "postcard" appeared on the back, it was permissible to write on one side, while the image was placed on the front. The image, which began to serve as a souvenir from a different world representing the exotic and the ideal, has become a projection of our cultural worldview and a snapshot of the perfect landscape without flaws. Postcards were seen as a mediator between expectations and reality.

Sofia Dimova's "The Last Traces of My Digital Ego – From Now On I Will Protect Myself" (2025) is a multimedia sculptural installation that presents a critical re-examination of the digital ego. At its core is a 4.3-inch LCD screen that displays a moving 3D image of the artist, functioning as a digital avatar. The mirrored frame and screen together become a portal of self-awareness – a place where the artist both watches and is watched. The viewer imposes their own reflection on the digital portrait, turning it into both a visual distortion and a symbolic embodiment of identity as something changeable, chaotic, and multidimensional. This creates a multi-layered visual dialogue between the artist's virtual "self" on the screen and the real-time reflection in the mirror frame. The act of looking becomes a personal moment of recognition and distortion. The abstract form of the mirror disrupts symmetry, challenges expectations, and directs the gaze to new, unfamiliar angles.

The project is implemented in partnership with the State Cultural Institute at the Minister of Foreign Affairs with the financial support of the Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Republic of Bulgaria under BG-RRP-11.020, a two-session grant scheme aimed at creating Bulgarian productions and co-productions in the cultural and creative industries sector and promoting them on European and international art markets.