Daniela Kostova
Lexicon
2012
Lexicon is a video of the artist and her child putting together a puzzle and thus deconstructing a particular time and place of importance. The puzzle depicts the artist with a friend in front of a building – Haus Wittgenstein. The image references a very important event in the artist’s life as it marked her first trip to the “West” (Vienna, Austria) in 1997, where she participated in an interdisciplinary workshop that deeply influenced her art-practice. Kostova stayed at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute Haus Wittgenstein at that time, and has always remembered it with a sentiment.
In this puzzle, the perfect house is a background, while the centerpiece is a picture of the two friends. The personal history is opposed to the historical monument. But the main narrative in Kostova’s video is the conversation between mother and child. The word “lexicon” has a double meaning: the “vocabulary” which the mother is trying to teach her daughter, as well as an old-fashioned memory storage.
The “important” story is overpowered by emotions that result in destroying the puzzle. In fact, the action in this video deconstructs the past by putting together the pieces commemorating that time and as a result fictionalizing it.
More info:
HD Video, 6:12 minutes. Metal puzzle box, 2012.
The video was created for the exhibition The Keyhole of Mr. Wittgenstein, curated by Boris Kostadinov, and presented at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute, Haus Witgenstein, Vienna, 2012.