Phase Boundary
An exhibition by Stela Vasileva
Curator: Boyana Dzhikova
12.05-06.06.2026
Opening reception / Vernissage: 12.05 (Tuesday) 18:00h – 21:00h
Phase Boundary
Kai+Gerda*
Phase boundary —the contact surface or dividing line between two different states of matter.
thepersonyouloveis78.7percentwater@gmail.com was my best friend’s email address for years when we were kids. It turned out to be the first part of a quote by Johan Harstad:
The person you love is 78.7 per cent water, and it hasn’t rained for weeks.
Back then, I remember thinking about the paradox of our bodies, which harbor immeasurable forces that drive us to take radical actions, yet are made of water—a simple and fragile compound. In this water, it seemed to me, was dissolved the entire human tragedy, and we were a sort of walking containers with varying levels of saturation of chemical elements, responsible for the intensity of our drama. (I also thought that the email wasn’t particularly practical) This, of course, wasn’t a particularly original interpretation—as far back as Antiquity, Hippocrates coined the theory of personality types based on four bodily liquids, whose predominance in our bodies determines whether we are sanguine, choleric, melancholic, or phlegmatic. The water in our bodies was pushing us in different directions.And it hasn’t rained for weeks.
The starting point of the show “Phase Boundary” is an artist’s winter walk in the forest, where frozen streams crisscross the landscape of the frozen ground. In these icy formations, Stella recognizes a manifestation of the human condition—the fragility of connections, their apparent stability, and the way they can crack imperceptibly and gradually before their final collapse.
The still puddles acquire their texture due to the physics of freezing — water solidifies gradually from the outside in, in fragments. These stages are manifested through the white threads cutting through the ice—phase boundaries. The form-making in Stela’s work with glass is similar—different levels of heat in the material mix and react to one another. The artist uses fire to recreate ice.
Stela Vasileva transposes her memories into the exhibition space—earth and clay construct the architectural wholeness of a point in time—that moment in the forest where different states—water, physical, and emotional—touch and unite their meaning. In this sense, “Phase Boundary” encompasses two registers: the symbolic, the dream-like, and the real, physical one. This aspect of Stela Vasileva’s work, which we can situate among a series of similar artistic gestures by artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Walter de Maria, Lara Almarsegui, and others, also refers to the ecological focus of Little Bird Place Gallery. The soil used in the show is recycled from construction sites in Sofia, and the use of this resource is part of modern architectural research focused on sustainability.
*Gerda and Kai are the main characters in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen.” The story follows the adventures of little Gerda as she sets out to rescue her friend Kai, who has been kidnapped by the Snow Queen after a shard of a devil’s mirror, lodged in his body, casts a spell on him and turns his heart to ice.
– Boyana Dzhikova
