Nedko Solakov: The Truth (The Earth is Plane,The World is Flat), 1992-2003

The installation by Bulgarian artist, Nedko Solakov (1957), entitled The Truth (The Earth is Plane, The World is Flat) (1992-2003), was created after the collapse of the Soviet empire and its satellite states. In this bric-a-brac of documents, manuscript declarations and recorded interviews, Solakov, supported by (fictional) characters, who are more or less famous, unmasks the mechanisms of propaganda which succeeded in diverting the most firmly rooted beliefs. His critique, a mark of absurd humour which is his own, aims, nonetheless, not only at ideologies. He is also skeptical of any naïve acceptance of these “truths”. Thus one discovers in The Truth, the letter from an opponent of the “Club of Friends of a Flat Earth” demanding that every certitude be cast into doubt: “Is it possible that people have become so mixed up as to challenge the obvious? The members of the club are warning us to never see things as absolute and to not be sure of anything.”