Balkan Mine is an extensive multi-disciplinary research of the shifting layers of history, memory and trauma in relation to the forced labour camps of the Bulgarian communist regime (1946-89) by photographer and researcher Krasimira Butseva.
In a multimedia installation including film, photography, sculpture and layers of sound, she is recreating her personal journey through the spaces where a dictatorship was once enforced at its hardest. This ongoing project started in 2016 with Butseva’s collection of accounts of victims, a recording of her own subconscious and fragmented experience of history as an outsider.
By letting the spectator become part of the intimate narratives of both the survivors and the artist, the work constructs a scenery of the unseen historical events and formulates a bridge between past and present, thus referencing the unspoken trauma carried within the Bulgarian society.
The exhibition took place in EEP Berlin , Germany between the 11th and 14th of July 2019.
We are sharing history through the lens - your stories, your past on camera. We want the videos and photos on this site to help you share your thoughts and memories of the biggest events of the twentieth century in your parts of the world.
Krasimira Butseva grew up in Bulgaria, before moving to the UK and continuing her studies, obtaining an MA & BA degrees in Photography from the University of Portsmouth.
Krasimira works with photography, moving image, sound, text and sculpture negotiating the past and the present of her homeland. Constructing multi-media installations, while exploring silenced narratives, personal and collective struggles, trauma and memory.
"The Neighbours" by Krasimira and fellow artists Lilia Topouzova and Julian Chehirian is at the heart of Bulgaria’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024. It showcases the stories of the silenced survivors of state violence.