“Humans have become an active planetary factor, and the effect they are having on the environment and nature can be compared to the impact of a meteorite or a global cosmic catastrophe,” Elena Tilova, expert at Green Balkans said some time ago in an interview with the BNR. Now, more than ever, we need to admit that we are the problem, but also that we are all also the solution to a great many of the climate changes on our planet.

For the 53^rd year, on 22 April 21, 2023 more than half a billion people in over 170 countries around the world will mark Earth Day with an array of different initiatives. One of the initiatives in Sofia this year is the opening of an exhibition by Radoslava Boor We are Earth.

The project, launched in Prague together with Serbian photographer Milos Nesic, reflects global environmental problems projected onto human faces. Being a visual artist with many years of practice, Radoslava combines poster technique with body art and photography in a drive to spread the story of the environmental problems in a language that is as accessible as it is emotional. Radoslava has lived in Prague with her family for close to 17 years, but she has always worked with Bulgarian theatres, cultural institutions and organizations.

“Frankly speaking, I am beginning to lose my national identity,” the artist says in an interview with Radio Bulgaria’s Vessela Krasteva and goes on to explain:

“Because I feel I am here and there, and everywhere. But that seems to me to be a good thing for the artist Radoslava Boor because I don’t identify with the concrete problems of a given country, I view things globally.”

The free projects she creates out of an inner need are part of this multifunctionality. She believes that with their pure energy they can prompt many more people to get involved in the issues and problems that concern her – like the Earth we are living on and changing. That was how, in 2019, as the news came in of the wildfires in the Amazon forest, the project We are Earth was born:

“As an artist I feel I have a mission to cultivate a taste in people with the things I do. More specifically with this project my mission has grown more educational, so I named the problem and its solution – We are Earth. What is happening affects us because we live on this planet and its problems are caused by human activity.”

As she researched these issues so as to be able to visualize the problems she is talking about, she found out that in recent years many chemical elements and plastic particles have been found in our bodies that can cause illnesses we know nothing about – even though we should. And so Radoslava took the first step with her first vision – painting the Earth on her own face, her orange hair symbolizing the wildfires on our planet. 

She was joined by photographer Milos Nesic, and together they started taking photographs of their friends and family… but then the coronavirus pandemic came. “People stopped being interested in ecology,” Radoslava says. “So I used the time to send some of the visions to festivals and biennials and they were shown in different countries of the world – Peru, Finland, Iran, Hungary, Ukraine. They earned the appreciation of professionals, so I was able to see their artistic value added to the purely emotional effect they were having on the people who see them.”

The public in Bulgaria will be the first to see the collection of 20 portraits in its entirety. In Sofia We are Earth will be on until 5 May; from 25 April until the end of August it will be on show in the building of the National Museum of Agriculture in Prague, and throughout June – at the European Commission Covent Garden Building.  

Translated from the Bulgarian and posted by Milena Daynova

Photos: Facebook /Radoslava Boor, radoslavaboor.com