Lilian Shtereva: how to fix a leaking ceiling

Abstract

I move through, work within, and think in an accent. I am constantly negotiating with my languages, the places I have dwelled in, and the belongings I have carried. This unceasing linguistic negotiation leads to oscillation between nostalgia and bewilderment, while positioning myself as a passeur, someone who perpetually reformulates, rearranges, and readjusts language. I generate an archive of entangled voices, cherishing multiple temporalities and histories. The immersive installations at the periphery of the gallery offer refuge. That space is a productive dislocation of nomadic accumulations, wherein disruption generates new, often unanticipated, forms of making and living.

The material assemblages are geographical and even meteorological because they organize space and time around them. Spatial scenarios develop where roles start to teeter, leading to a loss of control. The object is in flux, never stable; there’s always an intrinsic tilt that fosters a multiplicity of materially embedded and mutually affecting relations. Material care work manifests in the care for disassembly, for dismantling objects, and rearranging their components.

Gilles Deleuze’s model of the “plane of immanence” is implemented where different elements encounter one another, producing “meeting points” of forces without which there is no becoming. These encounters narrate a tale of contaminations and exchanges, as well as of cultural transfers. Cultural identity is viewed not as a fixed concept, a mere signifier and signified, but rather as dynamic and temporary, an ongoing act of negotiation influenced by national, ethnic, and deeply personal narratives.

Biography