For the second year in a row Komplekt produces a design residency for young authors. The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and Fashion Days are partners in this edition. The poet Bozhana Slavkova and the graphic designer Stefani Nedelcheva are the chosen participants. After working together and staying in Chepelare between August 3rd and 8th this year, their idea "Mother Dzhanka"* was born. It is based on the two things that made the strongest impression on them. The first was the large variety of wild cherry plum trees (djanka), all different in terms of fruit, yet similar in shape, equally neglected, and left unharvested by the locals. The second was the almost completely abandoned building in the style of communist brutalism, "Olympic Hopes High School," which is visible from everywhere, perched over the town like a reminder of its forgotten glory and hopes.
Bozhana and Stefani saw the contrast and the connections between these images and began to work with them. The cherry plum tree (djanka) became a symbol of the forgotten, the dirty, the wild, the crooked, the roadside, the lowly—but also the living. People take it for granted, seeing its fruits only as litter on their cemented yards, and cut it down. People are skilled at creating monuments, rationalizing, sterilizing, conquering the world—turning the living cherry plum tree into a monumental one without history, a ready-made product.
Is the simplification of forms in art, specifically in graphic design, a mutilation of the living, or is it a translation from wild to human and understandable? The creators present their answers to this and other questions through "Mother Dzhanka”.
About the participants:
Bozhana Slavkova is a trained flutist but also engages in poetry, theater, visual arts, and film. At just 20, she became the first Bulgarian author to win the large-scale international competition "Mili Dueli," in which she competed against 710 authors from 104 countries. In her work, she seeks intersections between different art forms. She considers herself an activist for human and environmental rights. She works for "Greenpeace – Bulgaria" as part of the community space "Magnet."
Stefani Nedelcheva is a graphic designer and illustrator, with interests in the field of experimental typography, poster art, printed publications, and visual identity. In 2024, he graduated with a master's degree in "Visual Communication" at the National Academy of Arts. Recently, she has been interested in text illustration and the communication that is created between illustration and graphic design in a visual context. She is inspired by the world around her, books, conversations with people, as well as music, which is a big part of her everyday life.
*Dzhanka (Prunus cerasifera) is a species of plum native to Southeast Europe and Western Asia. It's a very common tree you can see by the road in every village, mountain trail or highway, in every second garden. There are a lot of varieties of dzhanka in Bulgaria and it may seem like every tree has a different tasting fruit. Even though they're very tasty, they're overlooked for fruits like cherry, strawberry, grapes, etc.
