site.btaBritish Artist Charlie Warde Explores Sofia’s Fading Architecture Heritage in New Exhibition

An exhibition by British artist Charlie Warde, focused on crumbling historic buildings in Sofia, will open on September 12 at the Cable Depot in Sofia, the organizers said on Tuesday. Owning and Erasing the Past is a project created by Charlie Warde and Martina Stefanova to mark the 10th anniversary of the KvARTal Festival.

Warde’s Memorandum series of engraved intaglio (sunken relief technique) gilded copper plates is art that preserves the memories of buildings and the ideas behind them. They are usually made before the demolition of a building or, as in this case, before its conversion into something that compromises its original integrity, whether in terms of materials or function, the team added.

The organizers noted that these small works are the size of a mobile phone screen. Warde conducted research for the project using Google Maps on a smartphone, since Bulgaria’s architectural archives were confiscated by the Soviet Army in 1944 and remain locked in Moscow to this day, despite repeated requests for their return.

The team explained that Google Maps allowed Warde to study building facades at street level and to observe the changes that have occurred since 2012 through users’ archived photos. By using this public image source, Warde highlights the gradual changes in buildings with gold, which is a material that contradicts their modernist style and was considered a ‘dirty’ metal by Thomas More’s fictional utopians. Like More’s utopians, Warde undermines the conventional notion of gold’s value, avoiding its decorative associations and instead using it to preserve the wounds of the city’s unappreciated architectural heritage and the gradual disappearance of its buildings’ features.

Charlie Warde is a multidisciplinary artist who questions the extent to which the utopian ideas underlying modernist architecture align with the vision intended by their creators. He cites postwar social housing as a source of inspiration at a time when society is quickly discarding the “failed” architectural legacy. Represented by Cable Depot gallery, he lives and works in Marseille and exhibits internationally.

Martina Stefanova, curator of the exhibition, is an entrepreneur, producer, manager, and journalist in the fields of culture, art, cultural policy, and international cultural relations, as well as the founder of KvARTal. She is a recipient of Forbes Bulgaria’s "30 Under 30” award in the Culture, Art and Media category.