[sound art]

An ambient, meditative sonic journey that takes you on a train trip within your inner thoughts. It was created during my Extratonal Residency #01 part of Platform for Extratonality, hosted at Varia (Rotterdam, the Netherlands). With this project, I have created a sonic EP of 7 tracks, 1 video, and a performance at Varia where I shared the artworks.

I’ve spent quite some time on trains during the last few years. I prefer them to any other type of transportation and they have a therapeutic impact on me. They have rhythm, soundscapes, and beautiful sights. The inner silence here is placed on top of those many layers that help you get deep inside yourself and your thoughts. Usually, those moments are full of reflection - memories surfacing from the depts, fantasies circulating your near future in a different place, plans you're trying to make.

While creating the sonic works, I reflected on the inner thoughts that emerged while travelling alone and expressed my reflections through sound. I explored relations between time, movement, train travel, inner thoughts, memories, anticipations and ways of experiencing the journey. These sonic artworks lie on the borderline between ambient music, sonic art, field recordings, and experimentation. Each sonic piece comes with a short poem - it is written as lyrics and also visualised on the picture of each track.

▶▶ Listen to the album release show on radio WORM

▶▶ Documentation
▶▶ Listen on Bandcamp
▶▶ Listen on Spotify
▶▶ Listen on Tidal
▶▶ Listen on Apple Music
▶▶ Listen on iTunes
▶▶ Video

[art publication]

A deck of 62 cards, nested in a single publication that aims at inspiring a sonic collective or individual experience. The cards lead you through a journey of discovering four of the elements of music and invitations to test and disrupt them.

▶▶ Documentation.

Introduction to the publication by Stephen Kerr (musician and designer), editor of the publication:

Music sometimes flows so freely like water that we can barely catch it. Or it erupts like fire in our hearts without warning. It shakes the earth gently as soft, thick vibrations, and moves subtly through the air. In How to Sound Jam, you are invited to explore the elements of music: rhythm, melody, harmony and voice. These four building blocks, examined here through the cards in new and unusual ways, can be combined collaboratively to create musical experiences, while maintaining a cosy and warm environment with friends and strangers.

How to Sound Jam exists to facilitate Sound Jams, collective sound-making experiences that encourage playfulness, exploration, and a welcoming environment for everyone. They were originally developed for the collective exhibition S.Å.T.E. - Sounds at the Exposure, 2.11-2.12.2023, but can be used anywhere that there are people excited to listen, play and explore sound.

★ Produced by Gersande Schellinx. Co-produced by Chaeyoung Kim. Edited by Stephen Kerr.

[visual art on canvas and digital illustration]

A series of visual works that explore the subjectivity of maps: once we acknowledge that maps are always subjective, we can consciously map things from our points of view. For these experiments, I started looking for things to map and the value of using this tool as expressing, remembering, explaining, understanding. As a result, I mapped emotions, anxieties, health issues, memories, conflicts, etc.

▶▶ Documentation.
▶▶ Mapping sensations.

[mixed-media installation, sonic poem]

Sorry for the inconvenience sound-print installation addresses the housing situation in the Netherlands. It tells the story of a ceiling leakage that was not resolved by the landlord company for 4 months.

_audio of 30:15 min and A3 riso print

▶▶ Documentation.
▶▶ Listen to the sound piece.

[interactive sound installation at a group exhibition]

My Sound Jam at s.a.t.e. was a playful place that invited the visitors to leave their [musical] experience behind and let themselves try out things they didn’t have the chance to do before. With the help of some visual invitations [text prompts & graphic inspirations].

I proposed the visitors to explore ways to make experimental music, noise and sounds and to disrupt the traditional playing in a band. The stage was as cosy as a living room and the sound-making instruments and objects were accessible and fun. This interactive installation suggested the guests to explore some traditional music- making elements and disrupt them. To have conversations about how to approach the collective sound-making and how to document it.

_instruments, visual cards riso, acrylic on wall

▶▶ Documentation.

[mixed-media art publication]

It gathers 5 collectively made sonic publications and their visual elaborations within the walls of a CD case. It aims at inspiring practitioners to play with different methods for including sound in their research and artistic practice. This publication collects the outcomes of facilitated group experiences of sound-making and publishing. It is now available on Underbelly and Vetgedrukt.

_Experimental Publishing Master’s Graduation project, mixed-media project // laser & riso print, 2023, Rotterdam, 80 copies

[documentation & collaboration space]

My al wiki is an online space where I can document my research and artistic practice. It is also where I make public some parts of my inspirations, exhibition visits, event reports - all connected to my artistic research. It is also a place where other makers can collaborate with me by creating a profile.

For me, documentation and the way it is published and designed is part of my artistic and design practice.

▶ Visit the Al Wiki here.

_MediaWiki, installed on my own server, 2023 ~ ongoing

A man assaulted a 18-year-old Bulgarian girl: he had her arms, legs and chest cut with paper cutter, her nose broken, and all her hair cut with a clipper. The doctors made 400 stitches. The judge set the man free because what he did was ruled as a “minor injury”. The judge was a woman.

In this work, you can see 400 stitches - is this a “minor injury”? If the law says so, the law must be changed.

The thought of this story got my blood boil. The way we react to something like this shows in what kind of society we are living. The way the institutions that are responsible to find ways to prevent such acts to happen in the future react shows us what kind of future awaits us. Until we change something.

// digital illustration, Rotterdam, 2023 // license: CC4.0 - use it as you wish by giving appropriate credit
// remember to be mindful to her trauma and shock when talking about this subject and sharing content
// download from here [square] & here [full frame] & read more about it here

[sound art residency coordination]

During the academic year 2022-2023, I was a coordinator of the student-led initiative and in-house residency “Room for Sound” at Willem de Kooning Academy (Rotterdam, the Netherlands). The invitation to the students and staff was to use the residency to experiment with sound as a new or not primary medium in their design and art practice. As a care-taker of the residency, I expanded my research on collective sound-making practices and developed my facilitation and tuition skills.

The residency was created by artist and educator Naomi Jansen who invited me to take over the coordination. During my time as a care-taker, we started to collaborate and facilitated together several elective classes at Willem de Kooning Academy.

▶▶ visit here the residency’s public Instagram

▶▶ listen to the sound publications here

[commissioned illustration & graphic design for theatrical poster]

Once You Cross the Ocean is a groundbreaking documentary solo performance created by Bulgarian theater-maker Martina Novakova. It investigates how we recreate our culture and ourselves in a foreign sociocultural context and what image we would like for Bulgaria to have abroad. Through the use of verbatim theater techniques, the exact recreation of words and gestures, Novakova brings to life the stories of six well-known Bulgarian artists living in New York creating a universal narrative that anyone who has left their homeland can relate to.

The illustration and poster of the performance depict the journey from the two worlds on the two sides of the ocean. The faces are pieces of land that mirror each other, but the vision is always distorted from the various points of view. On which side of the map are you?

// poster of the premiere in New York

// 2023 // all rights reserved [commissioned work]

[zine publication]

In this little zine, I compiled 10 illustrations and 10 short poems describing my acceptance of Rotterdam as my new home. It reflects the struggles of moving, fitting in, being accepted, and facing your fears. For this project, I worked with digital processing of my illustrations.

_A5 // 22 pages // digital print, self-published // 2022, Rotterdam

▶ There are still a few copies left, see here.

[serious art game]

Connect[less] is a game about networking: a playful critical reflection on the self-improving and productive act of connecting with others in order to advance in your career and get access to work and money. It was created during the first year of my Master’s programme XPUB at the Piet Zwart Institute. It’s part of Special Issue #17 and it’s printed version is part of the collective publication.

▶ The game is open source and you can explore and download from here.

_created with Python // customisable board // 2022

[digital illustration & graphic design]

In 2021 I travelled more than 5500 km around Europe. I got to test how is it to pass so many borders after a year of travel difficulties, restrictions and worry. Only a month earlier, I had a severe burnout crisis which sent me to the hospital and kept me in bed for a week.

The journey was exciting and scary: I was not sure if I was ready to embark on such a long trip. Indeed, it turned out to be full of emotions - anxiety, excitement, fear, happiness… Each stop was filled with those and therefore, I coloured them. I started mapping my feelings. To see them. The journey is depicted as tree branches, growing to the final destination of my trip - Rotterdam.

// 2021

[vector digital illustrations]

My take on this natural phenomenon, in which the crowns of fully stocked trees do not touch each other, forming a canopy with channel-like gaps. Weren’t we all “crown-shy” during the covid-19 outbreak?

The series of illustrations reflected on the social distancing phenomenon during the covid-19 outbreak. While we were staying away from each other, a new craving for solitude in the nature also emerged.

Crown Shyness includes series of digital illustrations in vector. I also created some A3 hand-drawn pieces on commission. All of them are in private collections.

Write to me in case you are interested in purchasing some works of the series or to commission new ones.

// 2020 - now