Mending the blight

paper, clay, thread, 60” x 60,” 2020

The horizontal plane intersects the vertical cosmos to locate a point in the immediate reality of existence, a space where one learns both to will and to surrender life’s structure, substance, and history. An imprint of an imprint, memory endures: weighty yet tender, sewn from scrap paper stained with clay. These fragments, collected over years from beneath Mariya’s sculptural forms, are shaped into the pattern of a traditional Bulgarian women’s undergarment.

Each clay mark holds the residue of transformation, tracing the forms that once were and the ones that remain in spirit. Through empathy and the act of mending, the work tends to what is broken. It accepts that wholeness may never be reached and, within that acceptance, discovers a quiet resilience, a practice of self-love sustained through care, imperfection, and the persistence of transformation.

paper stained with clay
paper wrinkled with the weight of moist, fallen bodies
mend your wounds, folding and unfolding
i iron you warm - imprint of a form
stitch, sew, thread
your pattern - a shadow of history belongs fragmented
reflections of a reflection
like a scroll which holds the memory of an umbilical cord soaked in driftwood