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Two Stones and Heaven is a Fountain in the Garden of Your Veins was shown in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2024 at Swimming Pool as part of the group show Ecologies of the Prehod, curated by Off-site - Pauline Shongov, Maya Shopova and Borislav Angelov.
Two Stones and Heaven is a Fountain in the Garden of Your Veins Sliven, Cairo, Berlin, Sofia, 2024

Two Stones and Heaven is a Fountain in the Garden of Your Veins is an ongoing project combining immersive installation, performance, video works, plant and clay sculptures, a performative lecture, and a forthcoming artist book. It explores the fragility of architectural heritage and the role of women in rituals related to water, fertility, and environmental care. Through interconnected works, the project reflects on the disappearance of bathhouses in Bulgaria and Egypt, once vibrant spaces of social intimacy and ritual cleansing, now often neglected due to cultural transitions, privatization, and taboos around public bathing. The project began with two stons I received from Off-Site, a Bulgarian research initiative focused on unofficial heritage sites. These stones, collected from the ruins of Sredna Banya, an Ottoman bathhouse in Sliven, Bulgaria, became symbols of touch and care. They sparked an exploration of themes such as preservation, sexuality, and fertility, linking the rituals of bathing and rain-calling with deeper reflections on the sensuality and fluidity once embedded within these watery spaces.  

One critical work in the project, Everything that Remains to be Lived, was exhibited online on Off-site's platform and in Zurich at OnCurating in 2022. Most recently, it was shown at Swimming Pool in Sofia, Bulgaria (2024), alongside other works from the project, including the performance videos Rainbow Moon, Summer, God, Rain, The German sculpture, and the photographic series of works Mist Me: Me Mist. At Swimming Pool, I also exhibited an herbal costume Between Heaven and Earth, which evokes the landscape where it was made through its scents. A large-scale site-specific photograph titled Green Body: Swimming Pool was also installed in a window overlooking the gallery space's empty swimming pool. This pool supposedly functioned for only a day before the property was nationalized. The herbal Peperuda costume used in this photographic work symbolizes the invocation of wetness in this dry space, reflecting Bulgaria's transition ("prehod") from socialism to neoliberalism. This piece highlights the tension between preserving heritage and embracing change and underscores the potential for reimagining and repurposing abandoned spaces.


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