Trashland is acrylic painting represent a real scene inspired from a typical gypsy markets called “bitak” (битак). The storyline of the painting is from the gypsy ghetto “Sheker mahala” from city Plovdiv, where is one the biggest community of Roma people in Europa. Existing in extreme poverty condition lots of them live by reccling materials from all the city’s garbage cans, plastic, cardboard, metal, objects… Some go to France or Germany to import the objects found in European garbage cans. Then they resell on the gypsy market of Plovdiv. It’s like a trip where time would stop, all the vestiges of excess capitalism, are to be negotiated, a thousand phone charger of all ages, family photos, tools, memories of distant countries. The general atmosphere is like a celebration for the community, people smile, dance, eat, exchange animals. All of this on the rubbish. It is the happiest portrait of this community, the forgotten people of capitalism.This is a reality from the same Europe, is a travel as a picture of a familiar faces and situations in Bulgaria, but in fact recognizable in many other places. As well as depicting the mountains of garbage by overconsumption, which the whole of Europe is wondering where to land. The name Trashland is a state with many questions. On the one hand, are we being exploited like Trashland? Is the whole world Trashland? Or Trashland is a phase of human evolution?
Bingo for millions refers to the advertisements and slogan created by the mafia which abounds on television, on the Internet and on street corners of Bulgaria. Promotion of riches in one click in the poorest country of the EU become a visual code as a propagand by the mafia. The pictorial treatment is simplistic but also coarse, giving the image a childish aspect which refers us to the learning of symbols, the pyramid, the red sports car, palms… Everything we have known since childhood, as evidence the message transmitted is brief, Become the next Millionaire. Lottery games and casinos or credit agencies are the hallmarks of a corrupt system that promotes the cliches of capitalism to the limit. The dream of becoming a millionaire is to imbue received ideas, such as having a villa, a girl having been surgically redone, and without forgetting a big car. This is why the two paintings “Trashland” and “Bingo for millions”respond to, and confront each other, two opposing realities, but with the same sad background
Glory Nature
The mountains of garbage flood the planet like a trace of the greedy period of the human history where the economic growth and material world become priority than the environment protection. It’s a sign the planet can’t except to live with us like that anymore and we need to change and respect the nature.
Diversity United
#BoycottKunsthalleBerlin
At 2020 Martina Vacheva created the three works Trashland, Bingo for Millions and Glory Nature especially for the exhibition Diversity United. The approximately 90 participating artists from over 30 countries represent with their works of the contemporary art scene in Europe. “Diversity United” shows works that depict different generations, genders and regions. The exhibition advocates a European dialogue and takes a look at themes such as freedom and democracy, migration and territory, but also political and personal identity. The exhibition at Tempelhof Airport shows the whole spectrum of contemporary art: painting, sculpture, video and new media, photography, installation, drawing and object art. “Diversity United. Contemporary Art from Europe” shows works by Georg Baselitz, Monica Bonvicini, Aleksandra Domanović, Olafur Eliasson, Valérie Favre, Pia Fries, Slavs and Tatars, Mona Hatoum, Isaac Julien, Anselm Kiefer, Alicja Kwade, Kris Lemsalu, Marzia Migliora, among others, Boris Mikhailov, Ahmet Öğüt, Lucy + Jorge Orta, Agnieszka Polska, Gerhard Richter, Ugo Rondinone, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Katharina Sieverding, Jan Svenungsson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Martina Vacheva, Rachel Whiteread, Erwin Wurm, Nil Yalter Yan Pei-Ming and many more.
The works were shown in the traveling exhibition Diversity United in 2021 at Tempelhof airport in Berlin, and later that same year at the New Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The exhibition was also planned to be shown in Paris, but many artists, including Martina Vacheva, decided to withdraw their works from the exhibition in protest of the organizer.