Author: Марина Ражева

The Golden Apple of Istanbul

Golden Apples, R²

Self-residency in Istanbul

2025

Locations: Beyoğlu, Sultanahmet, Kadıköy, Galata Bridge
Medium / Format: Site-specific action, photography, ephemeral gesture

The Golden Apple of Istanbul is a site-specific project unfolding through photography and a performative gesture. It explores how symbols travel through cities, histories, and bodies, and how meaning shifts when an object moves from being held to being released.

A real apple, coated in gold paint, appears across historical and everyday locations in Istanbul. Photographed against the textures of the city (streets, bridges, water, architecture), it becomes both an object and a mirror, reflecting ideas of power, desire, value, and transience.

Photographic exploration

The first stage consists of a series of photographs made across different parts of the city. The golden apple is carried, held, placed, and framed within Istanbul’s layered urban landscape.
Neither staged nor theatrical, these images register quiet encounters between the object and the city, moments of pause, attention, and subtle displacement.

The apple functions here as a wandering symbol. Once associated with conquest, imperial ambition, and ultimate reward, it is reintroduced into everyday space as fragile, temporary, and exposed to weather, touch, and time.

Performative gesture

The photographic sequence culminates in a simple action. From the Galata Bridge, the golden apple is released into the Golden Horn.

This gesture transforms the apple from an image into an event. No longer possessed or displayed, it becomes an offering to the water, to the city, to history itself. Floating briefly among fishermen, boats, and passing gulls, the apple drifts without destination.

The act was carried out privately, without announcement, during a period of heightened artistic activity in the city, remaining outside any official framework. Passersby became incidental witnesses rather than an audience, encountering the action without explanation.

Conceptual context

Historically, Istanbul has been described as the “Golden Apple of the World”, a metaphor for power, desire, and the ultimate prize of empire. By releasing the apple into the Golden Horn, the project gently dismantles this image, shifting it from possession to passage, from monument to movement.

The golden apple ceases to function as a trophy. Instead, it becomes a message without an addressee, a symbol set free and allowed to drift, disappear, or transform.

Process and documentation

The project is documented through photography, preparatory images, and a series of photographs from the performative action. Video documentation will be added as an extension of the work. Together, these materials form a narrative that exists between image, gesture, and memory.

What remains is not the object itself, but the trace of its journey, a fleeting intervention connecting city and artist, myth and everyday life, holding and letting go.

Aranyalmás Book

Golden Apples

artist’s book

Materials: paper, glue, jute, photography
Dimensions: 35 × 45 × 8 cm
Year: 2025

Aranyalmás Book is an artist’s book conceived as a tactile object and a visual poem.
It is assembled from crumpled paper, sewn with jute threads, and incorporates photographs of objects and actions from the project Golden Apples.

The book has no rigid binding or fixed form.
Each page exists as an individual fragment that can be turned, revisited, and shifted. Through handling and viewing, the book gradually changes: it wears down, loosens, and retains traces of touch and time.

Turning the pages becomes part of the work itself.
The sound of rustling paper, the resistance of the material, and the weight of the pages shape the experience of reading as a physical act rather than a purely visual one.

Aranyalmás Book engages with themes of memory, choice, and letting go.
Golden apples appear here as images of attention and gift — something that can be found, held briefly, and then released.

Aranyalmás Rácalmás – The Golden Apples of Rácalmás

2025, Golden Apples

Golden Apples: a visual poem in five episodes
Created for the 5th International Symposium of Land Art, 2025 | Rácalmás, Hungary

About the project
Aranyalmás Rácalmás (Golden Apple Rácalmás) is a site-specific visual poem exploring memory, dreams, and transience. The project’s name plays with Hungarian words: Rácalmás is a town whose name contains the word “apple,” and Aranyalmás adds the image of a “golden apple,” a rare fruit symbolizing the uniqueness and value of the place.

The series unfolds in five episodes, where golden apples guide the visitor through questions of presence, attention, and letting go. Each episode combines objects, gestures, participatory actions, and photography to create ephemeral narratives across the island and the bridge.

Prologue

On the island, among trees and grasses, the promise of paradise appears both evident and hidden.
Every apple becomes a question, a memory, a dream, and a treasure.
Some apples embark on a journey along the water, carried by currents of life and time; others remain, waiting to be discovered.
This project is about transience, choice, and transformation, and how we preserve and reshape memories.

Episodes Overview

Episode 1. Almák-Álmok / Apples-Dreams
Apples are the fruits of nature. Dreams are the hidden fruits of the soul.
Golden apples are hidden on the island among roots and driftwood. To those who find them – joy.

Episode 2. Álomfogó – Almafogó / Dreamcatcher – Apple Catcher
A special catcher gathers dreams and wishes. Visitors can tie pebbles, feathers, or knots to its threads, leaving traces of their own stories.

Episode 3. Fűggöny / Grass Curtain
Grasses woven into a mat frame a golden apple at the center – the heart of the island. Visitors can photograph through the golden apple, capturing fleeting moments.

Episode 4. Különleges? / Something Special?
Among a hundred crumpled paper balls, a golden apple shines in the sun. This object invites reflection on how we seek the special and how it transforms perception.

Episode 5. Híd álma – Hét alma / Dream of the Bridge – Seven Apples
Seven golden apples are cast into the water from the bridge, drifting away like dreams released into the flow of life. Visitors witness the happening and the act of letting go.

Process

The project was created during August 12–19, 2025 in Rácalmás, Hungary, as part of the symposium dedicated to Sándor Márai’s The Herbalist and in homage to the work of Mária Bartuszová.

An artist book documents the visual poem and the process of the Golden Apples project.

Exhibited at

  • “Bridge” exhibition, 2025, Rácalmás, Hungary
  • “In the Footsteps of Time” exhibition, 2026, Várnegyed Galéria, Budapest, Hungary

Golden Apples

Golden Apples, R²

2024-2025

Golden Apples is a series of site-specific projects exploring transformation, ritual, and perception. Through subtle gestures, objects, and photography, ordinary spaces are turned into stages for ephemeral interventions.

2025 The Golden Apple of Istanbul
2025 Aranyalmás Rácalmás
2024 An Offering to the Sphinx

The golden apple—symbol of desire, knowledge, and exchange—becomes a catalyst for attention and meaning. Each episode engages the environment, participants, and the artist, creating fleeting narratives that exist in memory and image.

The series works as a conceptual principle, allowing the idea of “golden apples” to unfold across locations and forms, while each episode remains unique.

Anatomy of Cities

Anatomy of the city, R²

Anatomy of Cities explores the city as a living organism. Through listening, color, memory, and movement, each project acts as a sensory instrument, tuning attention and inviting participants to notice what usually goes unseen.

The city becomes a field of subtle discoveries, where perception itself is the medium and every encounter opens a new layer of urban life.

Shoot for Color
PanGorMonium

If PanGorMonium tunes attention through inner listening, Shoot for Color tunes the eye and body through color, texture, and light. Together, these approaches explore different ways of experiencing the city.

Shoot for Color

Anatomy of the city

Shoot for Color is a participatory practice that explores the city through color, attention, and careful looking.

2018 Keszthely
2008 Yekaterinburg
2004 Yekaterinburg

The project consists of actions, photo marathons, and individual walks. It treats color not as decoration but as a way to pay attention to the city and inhabit it more fully.

It is a shared activity without competition. Participants create a personal experience of the city where perception itself becomes the medium.

Within Anatomy of Cities, Shoot for Color works as a visual and color-based instrument.

Cappadocia: A Very Curious Place

R²

Published in “Yugra / Real Estate” Magazine, Issue 3, May 2008
Section: Architectural Impressions. Personal Dimension
By Marina Razheva and Dmitry Razhev
Photography by the authors

This early publication captures one of our first joint reflections on space, presence, and the surreal logic of landscapes. The article, though significantly edited and abridged by the publisher, offers a glimpse into the layered perception of place that would later evolve into our method of Betweenness. Cappadocia’s dreamlike terrain, full of voids, traces, and transformations prompted a personal and poetic response that blurred the lines between architecture, memory, and myth. This was one of our first attempts to “write from inside the landscape,” sensing the echoes beneath the surface.

THE ANGLE OF VIEW

2002, 2024, object, ready-made

THE ANGLE OF VIEW or Fence becomes stairs

A fence stops you. A stair invites you to move. One denies passage, the other makes it possible.
But if you rotate the fence 90 degrees, it becomes a staircase.
The opposites turn into each other if you change your point of view.

Exhibited at:
– Festival of contemporary art «Crossing borders» 2024. Beka 9, Hrpelje-Kozina, Slovenia
– International exhibition “Eurasian syndrome” 2002, Museum of Fine Arts, Yekaterinburg, Russia

______________

Author note: “The Angle of View” is a story about how meaning changes when you simply turn an object. It’s the same object, but the way we look at it changes everything. Sometimes we see only obstacles. But what if we looked differently?
I made this object in 2002 and then came back to it in 2024. The world around has changed, but this idea is still relevant. It’s about how our boundaries are not always what they seem.

Catalogue page from “Eurasian Syndrome”
Museum of Fine Arts, Yekaterinburg, 2002
Ural Worker Newspaper, August 24, 2002
Festival booklet featuring The Angle of View, Crossing Borders, 2024, Beka 9, Slovenia

Critical response:

“The work by Yekaterinburg artist Marina Razheva titled ‘The Angle of View or Fence Becomes Stairs’ comes closest to the idea of transformative vision. Her comment on the piece was: ‘Opposites transform into each other if you shift your angle of view.’
Indeed, what could be simpler than turning a solid fence into a convenient staircase? All it takes is a little goodwill and inventiveness. But do we all have that?”
— Yulia Filippova, Ural Worker Newspaper, August 24, 2002

Continuing:

In 2024, within within an experimental art camp, Káptalanfüred (Hungary), the project was revisited as a ritual action. A found fragment of a fence was physically rotated, becoming a staircase. The action was documented in black-and-white photographs.

In 2025, during the 5th International Symposium of Land Art, Rácalmás, Hungary, the work continued in a different form. In an abandoned space, a fence already positioned like a staircase was left untouched. Instead of an action, a label was placed nearby, marking the shift of meaning without anyphysical intervention. No transformation occurred, only its recognition.

Betweenness

Method

“Understand the space between breaths — there lies the whole world.”
— Jalaluddin Rumi

Art often strives to express what slips beyond ordinary perception and language. The Betweenness method is an artistic approach exploring the “in-between” — transitional, liminal states where “before” and “after,” “was” and “will be” merge into a singular point.

The Betweenness method focuses on experiencing and expressing intermediate states of being — those elusive moments that cannot be fully captured or understood by traditional means. These are spaces between sleep and wakefulness, thought and word, life and death.

Within these states, something essential and profound occurs — essence and revelation that slip away the moment we try to grasp them. Transitions are accompanied by amnesia — forgetting that impedes access to “between worlds” experiences.

Core Principles of the Method
Immersion into the “between” state — creating artistic spaces or situations where conventional boundaries of time and perception dissolve.

Expressing the inexpressible — using sound, light, space, performance, and media to convey subtle, ephemeral experiences.

Provoking empathy — encouraging the viewer to undergo the “in-between worlds” experience, potentially evoking memory or profound sensations.

Working with memory and amnesia — acknowledging that liminal states come with forgetting, and art’s task is to bring viewers closer to these experiences.

Exploring time and space — engaging with relations of “before” and “after,” “life” and “death,” “sleep” and “wakefulness,” where these opposites merge.

The Betweenness method offers a unique way to explore the depths of human experience connected to transitions and liminal states.
It is an invitation to touch the ineffable moments where the entire world resides — in the silent spaces between breaths.

Revealed Realism

Method, Revealed Realism

“The real must be fictionalized in order to be thought.” Jacques Rancière

Revealed Realism (RR) is a unique method of perception and artistic action aimed at uncovering hidden layers of meaning within real objects, landscapes, and structures. It is based on the belief that even the most ordinary or forgotten fragments of the world contain a sense of “unfinishedness.”

This approach does not turn to fiction or external effects; instead, it relies on attentive observation and minimal intervention to reveal what already exists but is not immediately visible.

At its core, the method works with a sense of “unfinishedness” or absence — fragments of a hologram hinting at a larger, intangible whole. The artist and researcher collect these fragments, revealing and complementing them through minimal, respectful interventions that activate the object’s inner resonance without altering its essence.

Key Aspects of Revealed Realism: Immersive and patient attention to the object or environment: perceiving beyond the obvious.

Supplemented intervention: subtle artistic actions — such as temporary installations, sound additions, performative gestures, or poetic texts — that reveal hidden dimensions.

Phenomenological approach: emphasizes bodily and sensory engagement, recognizing multiple layers of reality including emotional and historical aspects.

Interdisciplinary inspiration: draws on phenomenology, speculative realism, archaeology of everyday life, tactile aesthetics, and evidentiary art.

Revealed Realism is more than an artistic technique; it is a way of being with the world. By revealing the invisible within the visible, it expands our understanding of reality, offering a richer, more nuanced experience that bridges art, philosophy, and lived experience — inviting a deeper connection to the world around us.