Solo Romantika

In her work Solo Romantika, Gery Georgieva draws on the aesthetics of the Balkan pop diva to reveal how femininity, desire, and emotion are staged and circulated within mass culture. Combining video, performance, and stage design, the work merges melancholy with empowerment and performance with a sentimental Bulgarian folk ballad is sung acapaella, layered in three voices. Georgieva moves between sincerity and parody, diva and outsider, seduction and exhaustion. Behind shimmering metallic curtains borrowed from pop diva shows the performance video presents the artist herself — her face covered in glitter, and pigment, oscillating between glamour and disintegration.
The installation’s deliberately improvised and fragile theatricality undermines the glossy surface of pop performance, exposing the tension between artifice and authenticity. By embodying the language of show business and Balkan pop-folk culture, Georgieva transforms the codes of stardom and self-display into a space of vulnerability and reflection. Both seductive and unsettling, Solo Romantika unfolds as a raw, poetic study of cultural nostalgia and the performance of femininity. - Sabina Klemm