Artists Hristina Tasheva
Texts Hristina Tasheva; Short story: Concerning the various faces of forgetfulness. My grandfather loved to sing, Lucette ter Borg (writer and art critic)
Graphic design Collective Works, The Hague
Publisher Self published
Dimensions 210 mm x 297 mm; inserts 180 x 267 mm
Pages 465
Paper cover: 290 grams Sirio Color Sabbia; content: 90 grams Biotop; insert: 60 Grams Melo
Available here
My name is Hristina Tasheva and I am 46 years old. I am born and educated in communist Bulgaria, but already 21 years I am living in the Netherlands and working as an artist.
Arriving in democratic Western Europe as an illegal migrant and later granted Dutch nationality, I am still struggling to find my place in society: Do the local people see me as a communist? Am I what they think of me?
To find out, I traveled to memorial sites at formal Nazi concentration camps in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Poland, and Austria where many Dutch communists were murdered. In my home country Bulgaria I have tried to find the exact locations of former communist concentration camps (today many of them are only approximately known), which were intended for whoever disagreed with the regime.
The results of my investigation I visualized through photography, drawings, and text in the project titled ‘Far away from home: the voices, the body and the periphery’ that at the beginning of May 2023 is published as an artist book.
My aim is with this project to provoke a debate on our shared future in Europe. What is the common ground of ideologies like communism and National Socialism and what is their significance for the ‘average’ citizen of Europe? How do different societies organize their memory culture and are they able to bring it into a critical perspective? How do the interpretation of history and the politics of remembrance influence the forming of our identities and our view on the future?
Read more on: https://www.hristinatasheva.com/far_away_from_home.html
