Little Ida’s Flowers Maria Djelebova | 2006 solo exhibition Sariev Art Gallery, Plovdiv, Bulgaria | 2010 solo exhibition Credo Bonum Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria

Is it possible for the tastes of an elderly lady - a lover of opera with exquisitely clean beige shoes and a pearl necklace – and of an angry female student with a rucksack, for whom even a smile is kitsch and who at night lulls herself to sleep with Witkin’s photographs of the morgue, to overlap? Yes, when it comes to Maria Djelebova’s photos of flowers. They easily combine two traditionally-conflicting aesthetic codes. One of a delicately sentimentalized contemplation of nature which leads to dreaminess and nostalgia for a time that is coming to an end and the other - of a tiptoeing escape from the responsibility of history, supported by the fairy-tale quotation in the title – “Little Ida’s Flowers”.

But in addition to that, Djelebova intently enters into the nature of flowers until my idea of reality loosens, the flowers acquire a sort of painful eroticism of inhuman origin, become a conceptual sign of the inexpressible and transform themselves into a “colorful bestiary” of inexistent plant species - little Ida has grown up and has realized, through laughter and tears, that she comes from a reality which others do not have the privilege of inhabiting.
As indeed, the sophisticated lady would have been the same angry female student in her youth if we were not living in the linear time of history but in the cyclical time of nature. If, of course, you don’t end up staring for too long into one of the flowers, so that it gradually begins to look like Che Guevara.

Text by Georgi Lozanov

Media

MAMIYA RZ 67 PROFESSIONAL II
Mamiya sekor makro Z  f 140mm  1:4.5
Fujichrome Velvia 100F Professoinal
Limited edition 1/15 and 2/15 - Image 1 of 15 / 2 of 15
C Print on pearl photo satin paper 260 gr.
Size  80*97 / 80*80