A reverse Advent calendar set within a hallway niche of a studio apartment - created to delight and then perish, together with every promise and hope left behind after the New Year. Optimistic, in its own way, but necessarily so. Sad, Cells, Sticks is an exhibition of needles, dust, and cracks, accompanied by a poem.

The event unfolded in two stages: the exhibition opening on 22 December 2022 accompanied by a traditional Christmas Eve dinner, and a second gathering on 26 January 2023. This specific time frame was intentionally chosen to document the natural withering of a Christmas tree as an in situ installation at GARA Gallery and its website, where it was livestreamed 24/7.

Poem:

25 levas paid. We go home. I adorn him, I make him shine.

To beam happiness between the sofa, the TV, the cacti, the violets - to lооk at life.

Smells right.

To look after revelries, memories, dreams, and ribbons being cut. I couldn‘t help but get mad when we bump shoulders – two frameworks standing. Now I am cleaning. I promised myself to be more balanced. Not a lone promise. Now I have to clean after him and them as well. I carelessly gather all the remainings into mixed piles. One warm month with me was enough for him to see the very same world where, supposedly, he was the cleaner and I, the polluter.

I wonder if he saw how deep my roots go. 

Realised with the support of National Culture Fund of Bulgaria.