Всичко ново е забравено старо (Everything New is Forgotten Old)
London Design Festival, Planted x Green Grads, Coal Drops Yard, London. September 2021
Royal College of Art, July 2021
Tacit, embodied knowledge is embedded in each of us, passed on through hands, mouths, generations of kin. The old ways become new ways become old and new again, in a continuous cyclical process. The exchange of knowledge that happens between people continues this cycle. Nothing old, nothing new. Material becomes a bridge and a non-verbal language between one another.
Всичко ново е забравено старо (Everything New is Forgotten Old) is something my grandma said to me recently, as we were looking through some of mine and my sister's textile work, recollecting her own memories of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother working with textiles, plants and healing.
This work is a collaboration between my maternal grandmother, Nadezhda, and myself. In a fragmented archive, I document her recipes for healing, stories of women in our family and ways of being, translating them into colour for cloth, explored through deconstructed traditional Bulgarian garments. I share these fragmented recipes with you.
Our future is embedded in our knowledge of the past. I hope this work can act as an invitation to deepen the intimate relationships we have; between one another, extending into community, place and into the material world.
