The Museum of Humor and Satire presents:
PUSTA VE4NOST / BLANK ETERNITY
Exhibition by Filip Boyadzhiev
April 1 – June 30, 2026
Opening: April 1, 2026, 6:00 PM
Floor 2, Giraffe Hall
The exhibition BLANK ETERNITY by visual artist Filip Boyadjiev explores the mechanisms through which contemporary social images transform into cultural mythologies. The project continues the line of theconTEMPORARY HEROES series, in which the author works with the figure of the so-called “traditional bulgarian man” – a character that is both familiar and hyperbolized, constructed from various layers of post-socialist culture. This figure emerges as a kind of hero of our time – a self-proclaimed patriot who builds his own symbolic universe from signs of status, power, and belonging.
The central element is a spatial installation composed of thousands of empty metal cans, forming a monumental environment reminiscent of a sanctuary. This space can be interpreted as a temple, built by the hero himself as an attempt to leave a trace and secure his presence in eternity.
The forced encounter between two cultural models – Bulgarian pseudo-patriotism and ancient Egyptian tradition – creates a distinctive clash. The archetype of eternity is refracted through the local context and turns into a grotesque form, where the desire for grandeur mixes with an element of absurdity. The temple that the hero constructs is both monument and stage set – a space in which the aspiration for immortality is marked by its own irony.
In the exhibition, the hero dissolves into a system of objects and symbols. Fragments of everyday life function as cultural markers that shape a visual vocabulary of a hybrid identity attempting to stand simultaneously in the past, present, and future. The black color covering the objects in the installation functions as a final gesture of intervention by the artist. The shine of the symbols is absorbed and neutralized; the objects become silhouettes devoid of individuality. Thus, the desire to shine turns into a gesture of self-extinguishing, the pursuit of greatness transforms into an image of one’s own emptiness, and the hero’s ego gradually becomes grotesque.
After its highly successful presentation in Sofia, the exhibition moves to Gabrovo – a city that, in the Bulgarian cultural context, is closely associated with traditions of humor, self-irony, and social critique. Presenting the project at the Museum of Humor and Satire creates a new context of the work, which is not simply a re-presentation of the exhibition but its conceptual continuation. The encounter between the project and the specific cultural environment of Gabrovo highlights the role of humor as a tool for critical thinking – the ability of society to recognize its own mythologies and question them.
The metal cans were provided with the kind assistance of Elena Tsvyatkova.
This project is realised with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture.