Katherina Radeva - Native Birds

About

Following a residency at Robert Wilson's Watermill Centre in New York, Katherina Radeva presents Native Birds at Toynbee Studios. Native Birds examines what it is to be free. Based loosely on the story of the five Bulgarian medics who were wrongly imprisoned in Libya from 1999-2007 for allegedly infecting children with HIV, this work also presents a personal journey of a young Eastern European woman living in the west. Native Birds is a performance using elements of Bulgarian folklore through simple actions, text and video in a space filled with a thousand origami birds. Exploration of abandonment, exile, periphery and freedom are central to Radeva's work. In this project especially, she looks at the manifold elements that define what it is to be in exile and how these elements affect individual and collective identity. This public performance will be followed by a discussion around the work and Radeva's experience of the Watermill residency, facilitated by the artist Simon Vincenzi.