Companions in History | Jihan El-Tahri Radostin Sedevchev

The third chapter of Living Together, entitled Narration, speculates on the concept of togetherness through the perspective of communities who are neither seen nor heard. 

To us “together” means to build alliances with groups whose story remains invisible and untold. The act of narrating is an integral part of our experience as human beings; it is the field of our alliances, the space where we can sit together while storytelling, listening and learning. It is the act of retracing stories by observing networks of alliances and cooperation; of understanding connections that are not covered by the mainstream history, and thus acquiring of a more complex understanding of our present world, and of our ways of being, thinking, dreaming and remembering. Roland Barthes wrote that narrative “…is present at all times, in all places, in all societies; …indeed narrative starts with the very history of mankind; …there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narratives; …all classes, all human groups have their stories” (Roland Barthes, “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”, New Literary History 6, n.2 (1975):237). 

Companions in History, the site-specific installation by Jihan El-Tahri and Radostin Sedevchev in the ICA-Sofia Gallery is the closing event of the trilogy Living Together. The work of the two artists – Jihan dealing with materiality and moving images and Radostin focusing on finding and revisiting various archival materials, documents, and diaries, is the result of their joint residency in Sofia during the summer of 2024. They had the time and space to reflect on the notion of narration, starting from their individual artistic research and methodologies. Working together they developed corresponding research while shaping a collective concept and programming of a joint spatial intervention at ICA – Sofia. That is a complex environment where a multitude of different elements retrace a kind of history which is both individual and collective, transnational and communitarian, global and incredibly local.

Companions in History starts with the unexpected finding and purchase of an Egyptian Travel Document issued for Palestinian refugees with stamps from the 1990ies at the Bitaka (flea) Market in Sofia. This element became the focus of speculation about both History and individual histories, while at the same time turning into the first step from the conception of a new work, specifically conceived and produced by the artists for the space of ICA – Sofia Gallery. The document is not an actual passport but rather an ID paper allowing specific people (depending on their legal background and status) to travel to specific countries during certain decades of the 20th century. However, that and the actual presence of the document in the exhibition space are not necessarily predicated. Actually, the very fact of this ID paper existing in Sofia was the initial detonator of a series of discoveries, connections, reinterpretations and imaginings that lead Sedevchev and El-Tahri to imagine the site-specific installation Companions in History as spatialized storytelling. 

So, the artists are retracing both the student’s movements in Bulgaria, Egypt and Palestine and the way his travels resonate within the world’s history of decolonizing the Global South, Third World’s alliances, solidarity movements, relationships between non-aligned countries, and the Cold War. “Whatever is conjured is inevitably a projection of social and political values as much as it is an incarnation of the structural realities of the day”, to quote Kristina Khouri & Rasha Salti. In other words, solidarity is defined by the epistemologies, ontologies and the methodologies one inhabits.

Companions in History is a complex mosaic which leads the viewer to insights into an intense moment from global history when cooperation and alliances were key elements for the shaping of the future of so many decolonized countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America while at the same time, these were also key factors in the politics of many European countries divided by the Iron Curtain. It’s a story of companionship, of sharing of values and ideas, of utopian thoughts about possible futures. It is an alternative history generated by movements, generous engagements, participation, and exchange, networks of solidarity or forgotten histories. It resonates with the global movements and students’ encampments which spread in 2024 in solidarity with people subjected to neocolonial annihilation and genocide.

Living Together is a program of artistic research and artistic production curated by Katia Anguelova and Lucrezia Cipitelli in the context of the SUPERPOSITIONS THREE exhibition series initiated by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Sofia (ICA-Sofia). The events are realized with the financial assistance of the National Fund "Culture" under the program "Creation" and Gaudenz B. Ruf, with the support of the Municipal Security Company "Egida - Sofia" Ltd.

Jihan El-Tahri (b.1963 in Beirut, Lebanon, she lives in Marseille, France)

Jihan El-Tahri is an Egyptian/French national who is an award winning director, producer, writer and visual artist. Her practice deals with materiality and the moving image. Working primarily with installation art, she often engages with the interstices between official history and memory in an attempt to reinterpret the moments of our history of which no traces have been left behind and to propose a new reading and alternative voice from a Global South perspective. 

She served as the Director of Berlin Based Documentary institution DOX BOX between 2019 and 2023. In 2017 El-Tahri was invited to join the Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Oscars) and has served on various selection committees including Locarno Film Festival, Jeune Creation Francophone, Le Fond Franco-Tunisien and others. She has served on numerous juries most recently as president of the Documentaray Jury at FESPACO 2021. As a film mentor and Script Doctor, she has worked with Focus Features (US), Berlinale Talent Campus (Germany), Documentary Campus (Germany), Ouaga Film Lab (Burkina Faso), Qumra (Doha) Sud Ecriture (Tunisia) and other film training labs. Her work as a visual artist has been exhibited in various International biennials including Berlin Biennale in 2022, Dak’Art, and Bamako. She has also exhibited at the MoMa in the US, in France (Centre Pompidou) Berlin (HKW, IFA Gallery), Norway (National Museum), India (Clark House) Mexico (San Ildefonso) and Poland (MoMa) alongside acclaimed artists John Akomfrah, the Otolith Group and Kader Attia. El-Tahri started her career as a foreign correspondent covering Middle East Politics. In 1990 she began directing and producing documentaries for the BBC, PBS, Arte and other international broadcasters. Her award winning documentaries - include Nasser which premiered in the official selection at Toronto International Festival, Behind the Rainbow, Cuba, an African Odyssey and the Emmy nominated House of Saud - have all had both Cinema and Museum releases in multiple countries. Her writings include Les Sept Vies de Yasser Arafat (Grasset) and Israel and the Arabs, The 50 Years War (Penguin). El-Tahri is also engaged in various associations and institutions working with African Cinema. She served as treasurer of the Guild of African Filmmakers in the Diaspora, an advisor on Focus Feature’s Africa First Program and as regional secretary of the Federation of Pan African Cinema (FEPACI). 

Radostin Sedevchev (b.1988 in Pernik, Bulgaria, he lives in Sofia, Bulgaria)

Visual artist, Radostin Sedevchev focuses in his artistic practice on finding and revisiting different archival materials, documents, photographs and diaries. The found materials are examined and transformed by the artist, without the necessity of true and documentary approach, into installations that can be collectively recognized and relatable. Empathy plays important role in his process of conceptualizing and also experiencing the works.

Radostin Sedevchev is graduated from the National Art Academy in Mural Painting. He took his PhD in 2018 from the same school where he is now a Senior Assistant Professor in Mural Painting. He graduated “Close Encounters — Visual dialogues/ School4artists", the educational program for young artists of the ICA-Sofia (2017) and specialized with the University for Fine Arts (HfBK) in Dresden, Germany (2017), as well as with the Glyndwr University in Wrexham, Wales, UK (2011). Member of the Institute for Contemporary Art, Sofia. His most recent solo shows were at +359 Gallery, Sofia in 2022, The National Gallery, Sofia in 2021, Heerz Tooya Gallery, Veliko Tarnovo in 2019, at the ICA—Sofia Gallery in 2018, and at Vaska Emanuilova Gallery, Sofia in 2017.