“I believe that art has the power to bring us back to our senses — to presence, attention, and awareness. Light is a universal language, but it is also a medium of touch, a point of encounter between ourselves and the world,” says Berlin-based Bulgarian artist Marta Djourina in an interview with Impressio.bg. In October, Sarieva/Gallery @ DOT Sofia presented her solo exhibition “Fluid Light”, realized in partnership with AYA Estate Vineyards.
Hello, Marta! We are meeting on the occasion of the exhibition “Fluid Light” — tell us more about the idea behind the project.
“Fluid Light” is the result of an ongoing exploration of light as an autonomous material – it is not only an instrument but also a subject and theme of artistic research. For me, light is a living, breathing substance that carries both physical and metaphorical energy. The exhibition includes entirely new works created specifically for the space of Sarieva Gallery at DOT Sofia.
During the preparation process, I had an extremely inspiring exchange with Veselina and Katrin Sarieva, with whom I discussed how the works could evolve spatially and conceptually. This partnership was not only productive but deeply meaningful.
As Boris Kostadinov, who wrote the wonderful accompanying text for the exhibition and with whom it is always a pleasure to work, notes — here, “light itself behaves like a liquid: capricious, mutable, capable of constructing but also of dissolving images.” It is precisely in this fluidity — between control and unpredictability — that the core of the project lies.
The exhibition is filled with contradictions: in the darkroom I collaborate with light; light is the key to these works, yet we must not forget its power — it can erase information and ignite everything in its path when too intense. The works are unique pieces; there are no editions and nothing digital. They are camera-less photographs created under the influence of various light sources. The artworks exist on the border between drawing, painting, photography, and performance.
The series “Fluid Light” includes new works, some of which continue her exploration of light, color, and photographic material over the past two years.
Your professional experience spans various parts of Europe. Which moments were defining in shaping you as an artist?
My formation as an artist has been a process moving between different cultural and scientific contexts. In Berlin, I first completed a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and Cultural Studies at Humboldt University, followed by a Master’s degree in Art Science and Technology of Art at the Technical University of Berlin, and then six more years of studies in Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts.
I left at the age of 18, like many others of my generation — whether by choice or by circumstance. Even during my time at the German High School in Sofia, the feeling was that we were being prepared as a kind of export product. Such a drastic change at such a young age influenced many of my works, which, through the conceptual intervention of pinhole cameras, explore themes of solitude, isolation, homesickness, nostalgia, and what could be called the syndrome of emigration.
Berlin was the starting point — a place where analog photography became a territory of experimentation. In 2015, through the Erasmus program, I went to Glasgow, where I developed video projects and collaborations with the local art community — for example, the project Doo, in which I attached a small matchbox pinhole camera to a pigeon and captured its flight as a poetic reference to the regional tradition of pigeon racing and the history of the first “drone pigeons,” trained birds carrying large cameras with zoom lenses.
Residencies in Paris (Cité des Arts Internationale), New York (RU – Residency Unlimited, as part of the BAZA Award for Contemporary Art), Munich, Rostock, Estonia, Switzerland, Sweden (Landskrona Foto Museum), and Bulgaria (Iartus, Veliko Tarnovo) helped me expand my research on light — not only as a visual phenomenon but as a field of knowledge linked to quantum physics, photonics, ecological themes, and our sensory connection with the surrounding world.
I believe that international exchange — including that between Sofia and Berlin — is crucial for the development of any contemporary artist. For this reason, I translated my monographic catalogue Foxfire, published at the beginning of 2024, into Bulgarian, English, and German.
What are the techniques and materials you work with most often? Why do you prefer them over other media?
I work with analog photographic paper, without a camera – through direct contact between light and matter, between gesture and the photosensitive surface. This approach allows me to explore the very moment of touch, when the photon leaves its trace. I use various sources of light: from lasers and diodes to bioluminescent algae, fungi, or even the electrical impulses of the human body.
What draws me in is light’s ability to “think” — to respond, to create its own imagery. As Dr. Sarah Frost notes in her essay “Traces of the Hidden” in the Foxfire catalogue (DISTANZ, 2024), “Djureva’s light drawing is more than a metaphor — light is her material, and she herself becomes part of the apparatus.”
For me, light is not a metaphor but a living substance. Without it, we would be unable to see or perceive the world around us.
One of the things that continues to inspire me after so many years of working with photographic paper is its singular ability — only its light-sensitive emulsion can translate light into such vivid and vibrant colors. The process itself is painterly yet reversed, a kind of negative: a red laser leaves a luminous trail, colors invert into their complementary equivalents, and no other medium can reproduce them in quite the same way.
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