Puddle

Exploring issues and situations related to urban life, forced migration and cultural re-orientation, Mariana Vassileva’s practice is very much impacted by her personal experience. Growing up with her grandparents in a small Bulgarian town before moving to Berlin, the artist developed an interest in notions of movement, change, speed and loss. Working across a variety of media including video, sculpture, installation and drawing, Vassileva recollects her childhood memories or takes inspiration from present-day living conditions/situations, opening them to re-interpretation.

"Puddle" by Mariana Vassileva is an installation that consists of a dark, rectangular silicon block, which bears tyre tracks, and inside which water has been placed; a lonely light bulb hanging above is reflected by the water surface, looking like a full moon in the sky. Vassileva’s work creates, with minimal means, a melancholic environment evocative of muddy village roads full of puddles. Addressing living conditions she was familiar with during her childhood in her home country Bulgaria, Vassileva creates an affective and reminiscent space that holds a universal and timeless dimension at the same time. Bringing the sky onto the ground, "Puddle" produces, on a broader level, a dramatic tension between presence and absence, life and death, human finitude and cosmic infinity, the known and the unknown, allowing us in passing to see light in darkness.