Some of my travel years passed under the auspices of curiosity about the Silk Road – an old communication and trade road connecting religions, cultures, ethnicities, productions, languages, customs, spices, tribes, animals, directions, continents. In two words, connecting time and space.

One of the symbols of my journey, besides the well-known magnets, are … the bags! Yes, for me they are the indisputable sign of the journey, a carrier of place, spirit and matter. Seemingly insignificant, seemingly traditional, each of them is marked by the shop, the museum, the city and the state. Well, what better sign to carry the memory inside yourself, read – inside it – the bag.

First – is the packaging. That Christo turned the packaging into his life, into his faith and raised them to unattainable art heights.

Second – is an indisputable sign of the specific place through inscriptions in various alphabets, numbers from various systems, addresses, telephone numbers, names, brands, traders, manufacturers, art and crafts.

Third – protect and preserve, albeit temporarily, protect something valuable that I liked and wanted to move from the landmark to home.

Fourth – through shape and size suggests the content, through folds and folds envelops the property, through pictures and inscriptions hints at the acquired. Fifth – through color and concept original and attracts.

Sixth – a concrete expression of the culture of the seller.

Seventh – it is often a real, free work of art.

Eighth – difficult to degrade and destroy.

Ninth – can be used a second or more times.

Tenth – it traces the history of print and marketing advertising. Eleventh – proof of homecoming.

Twelfth – collector’s passion.

So, I collect my bags after each trip, with one stipulation that they may be paper, cardboard, canvas, but I put them under the denominator of nylon as the most universal, I arrange them most carefully according to the folds, which can to demonstrate the subject they care for (see Christo again), I hide them in public sectors and now it’s time to show them to you in a curatorial project that I’ve been considering for a long time.

But let’s focus on the existing threads. Like the stretch card my daughter gave me from her residency program in Paris, the threads on the way home come from the coin-erased stains. So the Nylon Road, unlike the Silk Road, is always on a different route. He pushes himself through every time, he pushes himself through. I can report that to date it has exactly 73 sections, which correspond to 73 courses from my University of Travel (see BOOKS section of the site). Or these are 84 countries according to the UN. Or that’s 800,000 kilometers, which is twice as much as the total Nylon Road, because the Bag doesn’t travel. She’s just coming back. Imagine how many emotions and adventures each bag is loaded with! How diligently she is filled with delight, admiration, sometimes with fear and hesitation, sometimes with tension and overcoming, sometimes with aspirations and expectations.

And now she has exhaled all this, closed her “eyes” and “lungs” and folded in two, four or eight waits. Waiting for next use. That is its purpose. And she has no idea that her watch, which actually synthesizes many of my hours in various time zones, will shine from a secretly stored closet in the closet.

I leave it to you to judge whether there is globalization or individualization? How does the Nylon Road compete with the Silk Road? And is it a good road sign at all!

М.К.

10.2020

The project was presented at the San Stefano Plaza – Betona Gallery in Sofia in November 2020