Featured Artist
Raya Korkut

I am a Bulgarian-born multidisciplinary artist working between Sofia and Vienna. My practice explores personal memory, spatial identity, and emotional architecture through painting, drawing and installation. A graduate of the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Mag.art.), my work blurs the line between interior landscapes and external structures – often reflecting fragmented narratives and silent tension. My visual language is experimental yet emotionally grounded – reflecting the undefined spaces between what we remember, what we construct, and what we choose to reveal.

“Silent Spotlight” introduces a technique I developed where visibility itself becomes the medium. The drawings do not exist as traditional marks – they emerge only as shadows cast by transparent plastic on a blank canvas. In natural light, they remain nearly imperceptible. They are fleeting impressions, revealed through focused illumination – asking the viewer to look more closely and question what is truly seen.

The installation features a smart lightbulb that automatically adjusts its intensity, subtly altering the shadows and changing the viewer’s perception in real time. As the light dims or strengthens, forms fade or sharpen – mirroring how meaning fluctuates with attention. A handheld flashlight invites the audience to become part of the work, to trace shadows and uncover details on their own terms.

This poetic interplay of light and darkness becomes a metaphor for human connection: In what light do we see each other? What if the other exists only in the realm of our imagining? What is essence, and what is only a passing state? How much attention do we need? Just as one can feel invisible without love or attention, a drawing without the light of a metaphorical spotlight remains unseen and purposeless.

This series contains 7 pencil drawings from 2012 (A4) and 7 colored pencil drawings from 2024 (A5) – a collaboration with myself, 12 years apart. A dozen years, the age of a young teenager. At that time, I studied painting and worked as a wardrobe attendant in a five-star hotel in Vienna. I hung the coats of prominent people and then waited for them to finish their dinner and ask for their coats back. The wait was long, and I sat secretly and quietly drew the hanging coats with the numbers that I quite often mixed.

Now, 12 years later, life feels more orderly. I decided to draw again what I observe every day while waiting … And just like that the contrasts in life turn into contrasts in art. Where have we been, and where will we go? Maybe our dreams will lead us, but things don’t stay the same. We won’t always stare at someone else’s coats, and we won’t always have crystal chandeliers hanging over our heads. There is a saying in Bulgaria: „we know 2 and 200“.

In Goldies, emojis become masks – bright, familiar symbols of digital cheer that conceal the quiet chaos beneath. These works playfully critique the social norms that demand constant positivity, especially in the curated spaces of online expression. Each canvas is a visual cacophony: a chorus of forced smiles, exaggerated reactions, and glittering façades.

Touches of gold shimmer across the surface, not as celebration, but as satire – an artificial glamour that nods to the polished perfection we present to the world. Inspired by Gustav Klimt and my years in Vienna, gold here becomes both ornament and irony: a seductive layer that distracts from the emotional dissonance it overlays. Goldies invites viewers to look beyond the sparkle, to question the aesthetics of happiness, and to confront the tension between authenticity and performance in the age of digital selfhood.

The relationships between inside and outside are being examined. Different people are portrayed in images through their surroundings and not through their own presence. The spaces we inhabit and the places we visit daily shape a large part of our criteria for beauty and aesthetics, influence our mood, and even our way of thinking. The urbanity that seems so familiar and boring to us has been our guide since childhood and has taught us a lot about dimension, distance, and survival. We created it, and it created us.

more. www.raya-ivanova.jimdo.com

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