The exhibition project consists of 5 works created in Bulgaria between 2018 and 2019, which
will have as their common line of research the definition of a “non-existent category” between
the feminine and the masculine.
Female and male stereotypes are rooted in culture and common feeling, both among men
and women; many studies confirm that people see men and women as different in attitudes,
emotions, male behavior and female behavior.
The stereotypes are obviously hard to die and basically they are reassuring: we like to think
that the world is predictable and consistent.
The exhibition project proposed for the Vaska Emanuilova Gallery has as its purpose the
discovery of a non-existent category between man and woman, through an exercise of thinking for all of us:
trying to consider common male and female stereotypes as true, and at the same time feel
that I’m not exately part of that - and therefore be part of a non-existent category -.
note: Vaska Emanuilova has probably already completed this thinking exercise in a selection
of sculptures, which - hopefully - is be part of the exhibition. This exhibition idea was born
from the particular sculptural style of the Bulgarian sculptress, in which the “bodies” - in
specific works - fall into this non-existent category
Statment solo exhibition Man, Woman and in-between
at Vaska Emanuilova Gallery - Sofia City Gallery
14.01.2020 / 14.02.2020
Every day all of us – whether man or woman – communicate.
We might establish a relationship of understanding and participation;
or we might remain silent,
intentionally omitting words in order to satisfy a more delicate or refined taste
(or even a duller and coarser taste).
I see an attractive and charming woman,
endowed with vivacity and brio, vigorous and exuberant;
she also has seductive mischief,
in which her sensitivity and morality come together in a fruitful concordance.
I see a man, trying to resolve his conflict between reason and feeling,
a conflict that has gone on since time immemorial;
lost, he feels a sense of inconclusiveness in him,
depriving the world of fundamental motivations
of living, of socializing, of dialogue.
Man and woman, the diversity of minds and faces,
both are a parallel of feeling and faculty.
Both of mixed temperament.
Valentina Sciarra