PLAY 2.0 by Iliyana Kancheva is a remake of Lyubomir Dalchev’s emblematic sculpture “Play” from the year 1961, but with reversed meaning. Instead of invoking a feeling of momentum and vitality as the original sculpture, PLAY 2.0 is a mere silhouette placed among the panel apartment blocks. A physical object but of almost virtual character. Pixelated, flat, lacking in detail, lacking in information. As if there is a gap in the landscape, a black hole. The object aims to draw attention toward the desolate spaces between the many residential panel buildings. The spaces that were once a playground for children have either turned into parking lots or have become inaccessible and repulsive, their original social function – gone. And so are children playing outdoors – their games have moved to the virtual world.

Iliyana Kancheva works and lives in Sofia. In 2010, she obtained her degree in Scenography and in 2014 she received her Master’s in Digital Arts at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia. She works in the field of theatre and she experiments with photography, video art, and interactive installations. In March 2019, she unveiled her solо exhibition “Interviews from Miami: A Dictionary” at the 0gms Gallery in a Drawer in Sofia. In February 2017, she was invited to participate at the art fest “JustMAD8” in Madrid, Spain where she won the “Art Residency Prize”. In November 2015, she launched her first solо exhibition “Image Don’t Cost a Thing“ at The Fridge in Sofia. Between 2013 and 2016 some of her experimental films were chosen to participate in different festivals for video art in Germany, Belgium, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece.

PLAY 2.0 by Ilyiana Kancheva is part of the art interventions, curаted by The Fridge and realized as part of “Sense of a City: Inclusive, Safe and Sustainable Plovdiv”, a project by the Bulgarian Fund for Women, implemented as a part of the program Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019.

GPS Coordinates in Trakia: 42.132737, 24.791400