Alla Georgieva: Museum of the Couch Wars. Ours!

Passions and Complexes Between the Couch and the Screen

article: Maria Vassileva

In September 2015, the Sofia City Art Gallery opened the first retrospective of Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Bulgaria. It sparked strong emotions—ranging from absolute admiration to total rejection. In fact, the rejection was not directed at the works themselves but at the figure of Christo, onto whom all national passions and complexes were projected. The artist, who never returned to his homeland after his escape, who no longer speaks Bulgarian, once again became an object of irony and hatred.

At the same time, in the Goethe-Institut Sofia, Alla Georgieva offered her perspective on the polarized perception of Christo in Bulgaria. In her exhibition Ours! Museum of Couch Wars, she included an embroidered doily with the inscription Christo is ours. Placed on an old-fashioned table, just like in the homes where we grew up, it innocently tells stories of rejection and appropriation, of devotion and denial, of losses and victories. The coincidence of the artist’s name with that of the Son of God adds several additional layers of associations and impact.

Christo Javacheff is perhaps the most suitable figure through which to express a nation’s complex emotions and ambitions for self-affirmation. Having grown up and studied in Bulgaria, he left the country during the Iron Curtain era, settled in Paris, then in New York, and built a remarkable artistic career. Due to complex personal and deeply psychological reasons, as well as political circumstances, he never returned to Bulgaria and eventually stopped speaking his native language. At the same time, over the years, he made several gestures towards Bulgarian artists and museums, including his support for the retrospective exhibition. Naturally, he is admired by many for the quality of his work. Just as importantly, he is seen as one of the few globally recognizable Bulgarians, carrying the much-needed sense of pride for a small nation.

Alla Georgieva weaves all these emotions and surging feelings into her work. The artist’s name (actually its English version) is embroidered in Latin script, subtly alluding to both Christo’s personal transformation and the unspoken tension surrounding his detachment from Bulgaria. The symmetrical composition and folk embroidery motifs unmistakably reinforce the assertion Christo is ours. Presented in this way, it is beyond dispute. The statement is wrapped in unquestionable traditional values (folklore being one of the highest in this hierarchy), cementing it for generations.

Alla Georgieva keenly captures a complex mix of primitive reactions—knee-jerk hatred, a desire for ownership, ignorance, and the glorification of authority. This modest-looking piece offers vast opportunities for reflection on mass psychology in general and certain national characteristics in particular.

The artist begins her own text for the exhibition with a quote from Boris Groys:
“All countries are now ideologically returning quite far back—not even to the Stalinist era in Russia, but to the early 20th century, while others are returning to the Middle Ages. Everyone is seeking their roots, looking for their cultural identity. They are all trying to define themselves and find their place by turning to very simple formulas of cultural identity.”

These claims might seem exaggerated if we weren’t witnessing this phenomenon around us. How else can we define the growing trend of restoring and emphasizing ancient fortresses and walls throughout Bulgaria? Of course, there is also a cynical tourist logic at play, but it merely conceals a deeper ambition—to reinforce an image of antiquity, authenticity, and permanence. Today appears too unstable and offers no alternative. That is why so many look to the past in a desperate attempt to extract from it a sense of hope for preserving their identity.

The motivation for starting work on this project, however, is different. The artist, of Ukrainian-Russian origin, has closely followed (through the possibilities of the Internet) the conflict between the two countries in recent years. It unfolds along several different lines, with at least two being easily distinguishable—one official and the other driven by bloggers. Alla Georgieva is particularly interested in the latter, which she calls the “couch war,” where participants, comfortably reclining on their sofas at home, create vast battlefields by propagating a new language of hatred based on ethno-national differences.

The artist transfers this language into the realm of visual arts, using iconic artists caught in the great competition of nations as her protagonists. Naturally, Malevich becomes a central figure, with his Black Square transformed into the focal point of two national flags—one in Russian and the other in Ukrainian folk style. In the Authentic Types series, various artists are depicted in national costumes reminiscent of late 19th-century illustrated postcards, which portrayed different ethnicities and geographic regions through their traditional attire. Thus, Malevich is dressed in Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish costumes, Kandinsky in Russian and German, while Christo is adorned in traditional clothing from the Gabrovo region of Bulgaria.

Another key element of the exhibition is a series of three self-portraits of the artist herself, dressed in Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian folk costumes. The backgrounds of these paintings include ethnically offensive words (with a glossary of this terminology provided in the exhibition). At the opening, Alla Georgieva performed a unique act by appearing in a mix of all three costumes, combined with elements of a military uniform.

Alla Georgieva is one of the few artists who actively respond to current events. She manages to transcend the immediate controversy of the issue, offering an intriguing perspective that adds even greater depth to it. This is also the case with Ours!, which, as the artist notes, is the first part of the Museum of Couch Wars series. We eagerly await the next installment.