R.R.M. Revolving Red Monuments
Meredith Drum, Albena Baeva, Eva Davidova, Slava Savova, Dessislava Terzieva, Martin Atanasov, Rositsa Getsova, Elena Kaludova, Kalin Serapionov, анд Nikita Shokhov
Waves Before The Quake
Curators: Albena Baeva and Rene Beekman
Buna 3, Varna
3 through 15 September, 2025
About the work
R.R.M. Revolving Red Monuments is an international collaboration between American artist Meredith Drum, Bulgarian artists Albena Baeva, Eva Davidova, Slava Savova, Dessislava Terzieva, Martin Atanasov, Rositsa Getsova, Elena Kaludova, and Kalin Serapionov and Russian-American artist Nikita Shokhov.
The works in this collaboration reflect on and re-evaluate Cold War-era monuments and the way in which history repeats itself by producing new generations of corrupt political leaders, intent on dismantling democratic institutions, civil rights, and social and cultural programmes.
About the exhibition
Caroline Arhuero’s manifesto for Buna 3 references Era 5.0, a term that has been used in recent years by academics and policy-makers to describe a conceptual movement towards a more human-centred, sustainable and resilient society, where humans and technology, including robots and AI, are imagined to work collaboratively.
Meanwhile, a handful of technocrats have plundered the entire history of human intellectual and creative productivity and turned it into fodder for their new synthetic text and image extrusion machines. Their marketing departments are working overtime to convince us that the synthetic output of these contraptions is somehow comparable to human thought, reason, and creativity, and is quickly approaching something they call artificial general intelligence.
To avoid any critical analysis of this power grab, society is kept distracted with artificial culture wars, manufactured divisiveness, and politics that appear to serve no purpose other than to undo decades or even centuries of developments in human rights.
Against this backdrop, an unusually large number of sharp, political works were submitted for the Buna 3 open call. These works are very specific in the woes they criticize, and their demand for accountability.
From the proposals received, we selected works for Waves Before The Quake in which we recognise the deafening murmur of our times.
The Yo-yo of God by Neno Belchev is probably one of the most ominous of all the works in Waves Before The Quake. It depicts 'Fat Man' the atom bomb, as a yo-yo toy, attached to Christ's hand in the gesture of blessing to create a single gesture that unites divine blessing and total annihilation. Like a modern-day Sword of Damocles, the work alludes to the ever-present and imminent danger posed by those who wield power, knowledge and technological skills in the name of their god.
A Rare Breed During Dark Days by curators and artists Albena Baeva and Rene Beekman deploys a new mythological creature and folk rituals to dispel the evil spirits that incite hatred of anything or anyone who is "not like us" in the name of some false understanding of tradition, religion or patriotism. These evil spirits tirelessly preach that "others" cannot possibly have the same rights as us or live like us because they are happy, colourful, female, queer, foreign agents, traitors, or, ultimately, enemies of the people.
I Am From There When I Am Here, by Bulgarian-Turkish artist Melih Nehat takes on hundreds of years of bigotry along with the false construct of nationalism. Instead of defining ourselves through borders and limitations, as concepts like nations or ethnicity do, Melih's I Am From There When I Am Here reminds us that being human exists only in our shared experiences, and that we each carry countless influences from others. It is this colourful collection of influences that makes each of us uniquely who we are.
R.R.M. Revolving Red Monuments is an international collaboration between American artist Meredith Drum, Bulgarian artists Albena Baeva, Eva Davidova, Slava Savova, Dessislava Terzieva, Martin Atanasov, Rositsa Getsova, Elena Kaludova, and Kalin Serapionov and Russian-American artist Nikita Shokhov.
The works in this collaboration reflect on and re-evaluate Cold War-era monuments and the way in which history repeats itself by producing new generations of corrupt political leaders, intent on dismantling democratic institutions, civil rights, and social and cultural programmes.
The final work in Waves Before The Quake is Avela Admon's The Cairn Within Me. This work is a response to the cairn, or грамада (gramada) in Bulgarian, which existed in front of the Varna municipality for over a decade following Plamen Goranov's self-immolation in 2013.
In Bulgarian folk custom, a gramada is erected when each member of the community throws a stone in a designated spot while cursing the perpetrator(s) of a particularly serious crime. The resulting pile of stones or cairn is interpreted as a symbolic grave of the perpetrators.
The Varna municipality has removed the cairn that appeared since 2013 more than once, only for the community to resurrect it. Avela Admon's The Cairn Within Me is the product of all the crimes for which she feels a stone should be thrown, and a curse should be spoken. At the same time, it provides the audience with a never-ending supply of virtual stones to carry with it and cast as needed.
The Cairn Within Me has a visual resemblance to Rene Magritte's The Castle of the Pyrenees. The title of this work refers to the French expression "building castles in Spain" (bâtir des châteaux en Espagne) meaning dreaming or making plans that are unlikely to be realized. By painting The Castle of the Pyrenees, Magritte, of course, defied the expression. Like Magritte's castle in Spain, The Cairn Within Me reminds us of the immense power of imagination to propel us to achieve the impossible.
Watching the works in Waves Before The Quake is like watching a tsunami in reverse; Waves are about to trigger earthquakes.