Mariana Vassileva
Highway Dream

Like the work The Big Puddle, the black-and-white photograph Highway Dream by Mariana Vassileva builds a bridge to another of the artist’s media: in this case, film. A single car tire can be seen rolling down an unpaved country road in the middle of nowhere, appearing to have come to a halt. In the merely implied narrative, the photograph is reminiscent of a film still. Without any further context, it is an open-ended, melancholy image of being lost, of a situation in which – contrary to the euphoric title reminiscent of a road movie – there seems to be no way forward.
“Acceleration is an important theme in my work. It started with the memory of the smell of asphalt and gasoline (…). I grew up with my grandparents in a small village and I was five or six when I was able to ‘watch television’ for the first time in this electronic box. (…) There was an enthusiasm for innovation that still keeps me on my toes today in art and in the turbulent social, political, ethical and aesthetic spheres of our society. I took the photograph Highway Dream as part of a scholarship near Montreal.”¹
Text: Eva Scharrer

¹ Mariana Vassileva in an E-Mail to René Block dated August 4, 2022.