Rodopska Beyoncé

Filmed in the snow-covered landscapes of the Rodope Mountains in southern Bulgaria, Rodopska Beyoncé (Autoethnography II) reimagines the global icon through a local lens. Dressed in traditional Rodope costume, Gery Georgieva performs her own rendition of the Single Ladies dance routine in the silent stillness of the landscape. Combining pop spectacle with ethnographic ritual through her subtle gestures and poses, she translates the aesthetics of music video into a meditation on subjectivity. The juxtaposition of folkloric attire and pop-cultural attitude creates a friction between the inherited and the aspirational, the authentic and the performative. Against the stillness and silence of the mountain backdrop, Georgieva’s movements oscillate between confidence and restraint, parody and devotion, suggesting both empowerment and exhaustion within the circulation of global femininity.
In this work, the artist performs herself as both subject and ethnographer — observing, inhabiting, and reframing the cultural codes that shape how identity is seen and sold. Rodopska Beyoncé becomes both homage and critique, a humorous yet poignant self-portrait set between worlds.