Madame A.

Madame A., an artist book and drawings. The book is based on a documentary novel - Ardent Red (by Ivayla Alexandrova, Janet 45 editions, 2008), where the basic layer is the life story of a woman, Vessela Alexieva or Madame A. It consists in a succession of husbands and lovers from the Bulgarian cultural and political elites during the rise of communism in the 1940-1950’ties and their respective political murders. The book branches out in a shifting structure of all the possible versions of what really happened, it surpasses the personal story and relates to a collective history of a change of regime and power. In the artist book fragments of the original are combined with texts and photos of newspapers of the period from the archives of the National library in Sofia. The illustrations are based on personal photos of the characters, hiding a tension beneath an apparent everyday normality. The pages of the book are flying, suspect to change any moment. It is as documentary as any document would ever be.

 

The images below are from the exhibition ReSiDuE at Wiels Center for Contemporary Art (curated by Dirk Snauwaert et Agata Jastrzabek, 21 June – 1 September 2013).