Memory Clippings (2020)

Tatiana Dimitrova
40х40х10 cm, collage, paper
  • Herbarium Collection - Collection - Memory Clippings - Tatiana Dimitrova
  • Herbarium Collection - Collection - Memory Clippings - Tatiana Dimitrova

I am an art historian, art critic and curator. The focus of my interests was the history of Bulgarian art of the first half of the 20th century.
I was invited to participate in the Herbarium exhibition by Nadezhda Lyahova, my friend and colleague.
I decided to illustrate important moments of my professional life with posters of exhibitions which I initiated and have been a curator or a member of the curatorial team, mainly in the 90s.
The posters I have kept are a synthesized memory of those moments. Somehow naturally this led to the choice of the form of collage. In my collage “Memory clippings” I used the posters for the exhibitions The 20s in Bulgarian Art, Jewish Artists in Bulgaria, The Unknown Sirak Skitnik, DA-gegen: Verbotene Ostkunst 1948–1989 (Official and Forbidden Art in the Former Socialist Countries 1948−1989) and several others.
In the process of collaging the recognizability of the separate poster, of the particular event of which it announces, decreased. Gradually, names of exhibitions and artists disappeared to almost complete illegibility.
The pieces of “memory” transformed into colour spots and abstract shapes, which merged into an autonomous collage image.

Tatiana Dimitrova (1951) is a Bulgarian art historian, art critic, and curator, member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). With over 20 years of research in Bulgarian visual art, art history, and cultural life of the 20th century, she is the author of more than 50 articles in specialized Bulgarian publications and exhibition catalogs. Her notable publications include: 120 Years of Bulgarian Art (Unions, Associations, and Groups from 1892 to 2012) (2012, co-author), Art in Bulgaria in the 1920s: Modernism and National Idea (2002, co-author with Irina Genova), Jewish Artists in Bulgaria (2002), Ivan Nenov (1998).
Tatiana Dimitrova has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions, including:
Between Tradition and Modernism. Images of the Native in Bulgarian Art from the 1920s (2018, Sofia City Art Gallery), Possible History: Bulgarian Art Through the Collection of Sofia City Art Gallery (2012), In Memory of Nikola Mavrodinov (1995, National Gallery), The Unknown Sirak Skitnik – Artist and Art Critic (1993, Union of Bulgarian Artists), The 1920s in Bulgarian Art (1992, National Historical Museum, Sofia), among others.