Driving Through the Past, with the Present Ahead, and the Future Behind My Back, 2018
Installation, mixed media
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Acquired 2024
Nedko Solakov is known for his sharp-witted, narrative-driven practice, combining traditional artistic training with conceptual approaches. Working across drawing, painting, installation, and performance, he uses humour and irony to question societal norms and the contradictions of the art world. This storytelling impulse shapes his journey-based project Driving Through the Past, with the Present Ahead, and the Future Behind My Back, for which he travelled by car from Sofia to Riga, documenting encounters across Eastern Europe. The installation features a display case modeled after the artist’s actual route, framing the work as both a physical and narrative journey. Through sketches and reflections on everyday life, the project traces shifting landscapes, revealing subtle differences and shared conditions across post-socialist Europe.
Solakov’s journey unfolds as both a personal and socio-political exploration. Having avoided air travel for over two decades, he consciously embraced slow travel by car, turning this limitation into a starting point for the work. Together with his wife, he drove across Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, closely observing infrastructures, behaviours, and everyday interactions. These experiences became the basis for spontaneous sketches and later drawings, capturing everything from road conditions to fleeting encounters with border officials and passers-by, whose gestures subtly reflect broader social realities. The resulting works take two forms: immediate, on-site drawings, and more elaborate compositions produced later in hotel rooms, where reflection deepens the experience. This dual approach highlights the tension between direct observation and memory, between the immediacy of perception and its later interpretation. Upon arrival in Riga, Solakov arranged the material geographically within a display case, tracing the Sofia–Riga route. The installation functions as both map and narrative, weaving together personal memory and the recent collective history of Eastern Europe while reflecting the region’s interconnected landscapes and layered histories. In doing so, it foregrounds a broader understanding of the region as a space shaped by mobility and exchange, revealing how personal journeys intersect with wider cultural and political contexts.
Nedko Solakov was born in Cherven Bryag, Bulgaria, in 1957. He lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria.
