Mina Kamburova

This contemporary shrine is one more step in the artist’s exploration of the subjects of identity, belonging and memory through her academic and human experience. After extensive research on deja vu, jamais vu, the phenomena’s space in the mind, and its inhabitants, the idea of The Characters of Curiosity and Misfortune is born. They are the people stuck in transition. As one of these Characters, are you alone walking the crossroads of change? The artist sees this transition as a religious experience, as a delirious mind’s journey through the desert. She writes the Characters’ myth, and gives them a goddess to illuminate their way with flaming torches, unlock the gates to the netherworld, offer them water where there is none. She asks: How does one embody a deity of transition through imagery and fiction? And then, she begins to imagine:

As all that has promised to be true and has kept its promise is the constant of change—a deluded mind cremates reason but its bones don’t burn. Scattered, a woman pics them up, and in pieces of pyrite and obsidian looks for a god to make a religion.