Nedko Solakov

1996

Installation, variable dimensions.
Materials: drawing, collage, picture, oil paint, cardboard, picture, textile, video, monitor, plastic, stuffed animal

Collection: De Vleeshal Collection, Middelburg (The Netherlands) (Inv. no. VH0175).

The richly textured narrative installation This is me too... from 1996 consists of an ensemble of 73 drawings, 28 collages, 23 photographs, 5 paintings, a variety of textile materials and a collection of stuffed animals, was first shown in the museum of natural history in Rotterdam as part of the city’s organization of the first ever Manifesta exhibition. As is suggested in the title, and as is so often the case in Solakov’s immersive installations, the work is infused with autobiographical overtones – a contemporary take on the tradition of portraiture which inevitably becomes a reflection upon the role of the artist in contemporary society: a radical play of often absurdist identifications in which the artist assumes the strangest of guises and roles, from the floor underneath the visitor’s feet to a rainbow or a fossil or a stuffed deer. In one particularly memorable high-point of Solakov’s narrative folly we even see the artist (known for his rather robust physique) appear dressed up as a snowflake donning a tutu…