Exhibition ‘Repentance – Memorial to the Victims of Communism’ opens at Sofia’s Raiko Alexiev Gallery on March 8
An exhibition by sculptor Andrei Vrabchev entitled “Repentance – Memorial to the Victims of Communism” opens at the Raiko Alexiev Gallery in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia on March 8 2018 and continues until March 24.
“For more than a quarter of a century, post-communist communities continue to be the victims of our communist regimes. Sounds absurd, but it’s a fact,” a media statement about the exhibition said.
“The fear and distorted values transmitted by generation to generation do not allow us to be truly free and decent, to understand democratic values and principles and to develop dignified and progressive.”
That is why the sculpture “Repentance – Memorial to the Victims of Communism” was created by the transformed bodies of living contemporaries, the statement said.
“It is a memorial of the victims made by themselves. A monument which wishes to give the past a state of victim so that it can move on to struggle and creativity. To achieve this, we must confess to ourselves that as long as we continue to be a victim, we are so our own executioners and repent of our crimes. Let us be more humble and more worthy.”
The exhibition aims to make us feel the need for repentance but also to ask the question of the need not of an emotional but of a historical assessment of communist terror, as to the communities of the former Eastern Bloc – now members of the EU as well as to the rest of the European community, the statement said.
Vrabchev works in the fields of monumental and public art. He studied sculpture at the National Academy of Arts Sofia and the National High School for fine arts Sofia. He is the author of the monument to Major Thompson in Bulgaria.
In 2017, he took part in Sculpt at Kew Gardens in London, and the year before that, Vrabchev took part in the Illuminated River competition in London. That same year, he had a presentation, АБВ/ABC sculpture at Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna.
In 2015, he took part in the international “Sculpture and Object” festival in Bratislava, and in 2014, in the Sofia Underground Festival.
The Raiko Alexiev Gallery is at 125 Rakovski Street in Sofia.
