or Nothing Remains but Air
Several soap bubbles are released simultaneously. It remains uncertain whether one, several, or none of them is an offering.
The bubbles disappear. Nothing remains to confirm what, if anything, was offered, or whether it was received.
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Sörnyepuszta & Cserfekvési, Hungary / Spitzelofen, Austria / Valcamonica, Italy
site-specific action, performance
Absence / From essence
Created especially for:
FrontPage: Next 2025
Melina Cultural Centre, Athens, Greece
The installation was conceived for FrontPage: Next as a reading corner where absence became the primary material.
Visitors were invited to read, look, photograph, and participate. The work unfolded through their actions.
Online continuation:
During the exhibition, visitors could upload photographs and comments through a QR code placed inside the installation.
The submissions were edited and published in real time, extending the work beyond the exhibition space.
Proofs of Presence — Living Archive
Press and documentation:
ONE live (YouTube) «Κεντρικό Δελτίο Ειδήσεων», 02.05.2025
Interview with curators Axianews, 18.05.2025:
The FrontPage:Next project was included in the rankin of the best exhibitions of 2025 in Athens:
STORY
Lullaby for the River was created for VKL/VYKL, a mini-festival of performances and actions in the urban environment, held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on 11 June 2003. The festival was organized by the Yekaterinburg branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts to present the first issue of a magazine devoted to contemporary art in the Urals.
Instead of presenting the magazine within gallery walls, the organizers invited artists featured in its pages to make works in the city. The festival followed a defined route, conceived as a journey through the urban cultural landscape and an invitation to encounter contemporary art outside conventional exhibition spaces.
Marina Razheva created Lullaby for the River for this occasion. The performance took place on the embankment of the Iset River. Vladimir Razhev, dressed in a penguin costume, played a wooden recorder. A semicircle of herrings lay in front of him; beside him stood a small crystal vessel containing fish-oil capsules.
The scene brought together a lullaby and a river, a costumed figure and dead fish, a musical gesture and an unusual offering. The work unfolded in the public space as part of a festival that brought contemporary art into the everyday life of the city.
The performance was documented under the title Penguin in the festival’s online archive. The photographs and surviving media references now serve as traces of the action.
Event: VKL/VYKL magazine presentation and mini-festival
Date: 11 June 2003
Location: Iset River embankment, Yekaterinburg, Russia
Artist: Marina Razheva
Performer: Vladimir Razhev
Organizers: Yekaterinburg branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts
Curators: Nailya Allakhverdieva, Arseniy Sergeev and Tatyana Vetluzhskikh
The work continues as traces
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Photographs of light recorded in one stone were read by another.
Wind displaced the images.
The work emerges in the moment of encounter.
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Hungary: Pécs, 2016. Szentbékkálla, 2026
Photography, site-specific action
2016 / 2026
Hungary: Pécs / Szentbékkálla
Photography, site-specific action
In December 2016, as I was leaving Cella Septichora in Pécs, Hungary, I noticed sunlight passing through the stone of the entrance door. The light revealed translucent and opaque areas of the rock that resembled musical notation, a cardiogram, or an ancient script. I photographed them in colour, without any processing.
When I returned in May 2024, the conditions had changed. In winter the door is kept closed against the cold, even when the museum is open; in the warm months it is kept open. We arrived before the museum opened to photograph the door from outside, closed. Later, from inside, I looked at it as I had in 2016: leaves on the trees obscured the sunlight, and the door stood open. It seemed to be fixed in that position, so we did not close it ourselves. Recreating the original image would have required a clear day, the right position of the sun, bare trees, and a closed door. In December 2016, all these conditions had come together by chance.
In March 2026, I brought printed copies of these photographs to the Stone Sea near Szentbékkálla, Hungary.
I temporarily attached the prints to the rocks of a narrow, unusually straight stone corridor. The wind tore the sheets loose and displaced them, repeatedly rearranging their positions.
After the action was documented, all the prints were collected and removed from the site. No trace was left behind.
Photographs of light recorded in one stone were read by another. The work emerges in the moment of encounter.
The installation was carried out with the assistance of Dmitry Razhev, who also witnessed the action.
Stone Sea, Szentbékkálla, Hungary, 28 March 2026
Photographic and video documentation of the action.
Cella Septichora, Pécs, Hungary, December 2016
Colour photographs of light and shadow on the stone entrance door, made without processing.
The work was presented as documentation.
It continues through viewing, circulation, and memory.
Traces in perception
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Documentation on view
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Online traces: Instagram
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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.
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.
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
2024-2025
Golden Apples is a series of site-specific gestures unfolding across different locations, cultures, and situations.
The project is centered around a simple object: a golden apple. A familiar image burdened with myths, promises, desire, power, and reward.
In these works, the apple loses its function as a trophy or possession. It appears, moves, is offered, released, or abandoned.
Each episode transforms the symbol through a different relation to place, time, and attention.
The project unfolds through temporary interventions, photography, participation, and disappearance.
The golden surface does not elevate the object, but exposes its fragility.
The work continues through traces, memory, and shifting perception.
