NOT WHAT WE SAY, BUT HOW WE SAY IT

Sevda Semer's work has always positioned itself between text and the visual, but also between intimacy and the public. She was born in Sofia in 1990 and is a graduate of the National High School for Ancient Languages and Cultures. Before returning to the capital, she spent two years in London, where she filled the window displays of bookstores with typography designs and devoted herself to making zines during her residency at the largest risography studio Hato Press. Writing came first in her creative biography, perhaps because she talked before she took her first steps. We know her as the author of articles, book reviews, interviews. Then her words grew into visual diaries. Then these drawings started to appear on wide-format printing paper. Textile, installations, photography, audio, and video also started to appear in her work. Everything she creates seems to offer a direct conduit to her personal thoughts, feelings, experiences, but it is also often a response to public attitudes. She is one of the few artists in our country to openly talk about being gay, which is why we spoke to her not just about art, but also about when the private matter of sexuality becomes a public issue.

You say that you have been surrounded by books since you were a child, including art books. What are the images and stories you remember most clearly from that time?

I remember all sorts of stories – from the first Pippi book I read to Tove Jansson and Roald Dahl, whom I still reread today. But going back to the images you grew up with is a wonderful thing, as everyone who has revisited the illustrations of their favorite book years later can tell you. Of the art books and albums, I remember Escher most clearly, the incredible drawings of Stefan Despodov, a book of melodramatic paintings by Turner, when I saw these paintings for the first time in a gallery in London twenty-five years later, I cried. It is such a great treasure to grow up with a huge library. I realize that we are one of the last generations here, in which almost everyone grew up this way.

Figures, 2019, Credo Bonum Gallery

When did you become conscious of the need for self-expression and what caused it?

It happened in a more conscious manner when I was about fifteen and I first came across the work of Keri Smith, a Canadian writer and artist. All her projects are in the form of books and in dialogue with the audience. For example, each page of Wreck This Journal gives you instructions for how to ruin the book in a different way and encourages you to be rough and impolite, to make an ugly mess. For the first time, I began to look at my visual diaries and things like my collection of found paper clips in a new way – I saw that art books can be more than just an album of Escher's works.

Your project with the diary Five years on love and intimacywas like an open invitation into your personal life. Do you feel any hesitation about what to show in front of an audience and what to keep to yourself?

The rule I followed for the visual diaries in this project was that I would make them every day, and once that day was over, I would not go back and edit anything. There were declarations of love, intimate drawings, names of cities visited, even petty accusations after some conflict. But before the exhibition opened, I went back to one of entries and crossed out a small joke. I don't know why it bothered me so much. But that's precisely the question – something I think of as very revealing could be something that no one else pays attention to, or something that does not seem all that serious to me could shock someone else. What matters to me is that the work is personal, but also leaves enough space for the viewer to be able to connect with it and with their own stories.

When did you decide to move from writing to painting and what prompted this change?

These things happened in parallel and they still coexist. I continue to write, it's my other professional path. I don't think I can only choose one, they both bring me equal pleasure.

Visual Diaries, 2017, exhibited in gallery +359

You are popular as a visual artist, but your art is both verbal and lyrical. How do you explain this need for words to intervene?

Again, the lyrical answer would be that things got mixed up back in that library, where I would sometimes reach for an album, and other times – for a fairy tale. But a more concrete answer is that for me narrative is an important tool for engaging my audience. I don't believe in long captions or titles that overexplain. If I want to explain something about the project, I do that within it, as part of the art. I often do it using words because they are important to me. When I was a baby, I could speak long before I could stand firmly on my feet.

Your work often features a kind of self-analysis – have you learned anything new about yourself through art? 

That's a difficult question, let me answer using an example. About two years ago I worked on the project "How we lived," which was part of a joint exhibition at the Sofia City Art Gallery – it is about a traumatic childhood memory that I had forgotten. A teacher was always threatening that she would strip us naked if we didn't take an afternoon nap. One day it was my turn. I don't remember what I did, just that I was crying and that I felt shame – I don't remember what happened with me or with the other children. It's as if the memory cuts off. That's exactly why I wanted to work with that memory. I tried to remember more through in-depth work and conversations with another person from kindergarten. It didn't work. Sometimes you realize that all you can do is learn to live with that feeling and the sense that sometimes there is no resolution. We always want to take action. Sometimes that action is to just accept. Lately I've been feeling like I'm doing something similar with almost all my projects.

Five years on love and intimacy, 2019, Sofia City Art Gallery

In your latest project, "Two Forces That Are Being Created," words intertwine and overlap to the point of illegibility. Is this is a metaphor for how communication between people happens in the present moment – they say so many things, talk from all sorts of "platforms" and it creates a kind of noise that makes things very difficult to understand?

Blocking someone is the modern way to express disagreement, and it is very indicative of our desire to control the narrative. But it's actually making the choice to close your eyes, to refuse to see. For me, it is not important what we say, but how we speak: the content is not as important as speaking with respect for the other's differences.

Two forces that are being created, 2021, gallery +359, photo: Bozhana Dimitrova

What else can art do to improve the dialogue and understanding of topics important to the LGBTI + community?

The same thing it can do more generally: be honest, intimate, personal, to not to put on a mask and to speak directly.

Three words that you always think about deeply?

Communication, play, intimacy.

What will you do after this last question?

I'll start working.

You can see more of Sevda Semer's work on instagram.com/supakafka и sevdasemer.com.