Blue Memories
2024 – 2025, Project for Dechko Uzunov Museum, branch of Sofia City Art Gallery
water colour document of the forgotten women, 200x90cm
The exhibition Blue Memories by Iskra Blagoeva is the result of the project Crossing Borders. This project started in November 2023 and, at the request of the artist, she was given the opportunity to work in the studio of Dechko Uzunov, studying his works and the archival materials preserved there. Thus, Crossing Borders moved beyond the passive role of a comparative exhibition—juxtaposing the works of a contemporary artist with those of Uzunov—and transformed into a process that led to the conception and realization of an entirely new exhibition.
Blue Memories reflects on the peculiarities of memory, with its dual nature of remembering and forgetting. What memory (personal or collective) chooses to retain and what it lets slip away was a constant question that arose as the artist engaged with Uzunov’s archive. During her residency in his studio, Blagoeva was drawn above all to various aspects of his personal life and to his role as a public figure, teacher, and chairman of the Union of Bulgarian Artists.
Exploring archival photographs, she turned to the creation of a painting in a medium previously foreign to her practice—watercolor. She was especially captivated by the multitude of women’s faces, famous or anonymous, appearing in the archival photographs. It is to these images that Blagoeva dedicates what she calls her watercolor document, using a single color—blue. She creates a monumental composition uniting numerous female faces from Uzunov’s archive. These are women from different eras, with varied roles in society and in the artist’s life, sometimes barely hinted at, shrouded in anonymity, sometimes sharply delineated, detailed, or rendered with caricatural distortion. Among them are Uzunov’s mother, his students, his known or unknown relatives, actresses, writers, artists, and others. Within this constellation, Blagoeva also inserts her own self-portrait, inspired by an archival photograph.
The work is positioned in front of the fireplace in the studio—marginalized in the corner, yet simultaneously placed in a spot with particular symbolic weight. In shaping these images, Blagoeva skillfully combines photographic strategies with the painterly possibilities of watercolor.
While she worked, the studio came alive with numerous conversations and discussions involving artists, art historians, and students. A video was recorded as a result of these encounters, also included in the exhibition. It presents fragments of a dialogue dedicated to Uzunov, to contemporary art, and to Blagoeva’s own practice, with contributions by Luchezar Boyadjiev, Iskra Blagoeva, Adelina Fileva, Dr. Tatyana Dimitrova, Daniela Radeva, Dr. Lyuben Domozetski, and Philip Stoilov.
The museum gallery adjacent to the studio has been entirely transformed by the light of a neon sign, Blue Memories, specially created for the project. Various objects from Uzunov’s archive were carefully studied, and Blagoeva chose to foreground one archival piece, displayed and museologized on a pedestal: a photograph with an inscription on the back. The author of the inscription remains unknown, but according to Blagoeva, among the many photographs, this one possesses a particular sensitivity and poetic charge.
Next to the carefully lit photograph under a glass dome, an unframed, unlit self-portrait of Uzunov is placed on the wall. His pale face emerges from the blue background like a ghost, staring into the sad memories evoked by the neon sign.
Lyuben Domozetski, curator
Gallery-Museum “Dechko Uzunov”, exhibition view:
photo: Kalin Serapionov