site.btaExhibition Tells Forgotten Stories of Bulgarian Villages Submerged by Dams

An exhibition tells the forgotten stories of Bulgarian villages submerged due to the active construction of dams in the 1950-1986 period. Lost Underwater will be on display at Sofia's Bobbina Cultural Space from April 9 to 12, the organizers said.

The exhibition of sisters Ralitsa Kamenova and Stela Bizeva is a multi-genre installation comprising textile collages, sound images, and video art. The exhibition presents the fate of these missing places and their residents by relying on archive images, chronicles, documentary videos, photos, field sounds, documents, and media articles.

Kamenova and Bizeva began the Lost Underwater initiative in 2020 as an Instagram page, and now it will be presented as an exhibition to acquaint people with these little-known stories from the 1950-1986 period, when dams were actively being constructed across the country.

"It is no secret that part of these dams were built on top of villages, the residents of which were forced to relocate. This is the fate of the residents of over 40 villages across Bulgaria. Such a historical event can be regarded as insignificant in scale but is part of the shared tale of generations of people and leaves a deep imprint on their lives, which were irrevocably changed," the team behind the exhibition said.