serpentine breath

Commissioned for the main stage of the Rivers of Sofia Festival 2025, Serpentine Breath creates a spatial link from the festival’s entrance to the main stage, guiding visitors through a flowing pathway that unites audience and performers in a shared current.

Inspired by the Zmey (serpent or dragon) — the guardian of rivers, clouds, and mountain waters in Bulgarian folklore — the installation embodies the rhythm and duality of nature: both a protective presence and a fierce, untamed force. Traditionally, the zmey is seen as a watcher over the elements, ensuring balance between storm and calm, flow and stillness.

The serpent’s body is formed from 30,000 suspended strips of recycled plastic, becoming its luminous scales. Designed and assembled collectively, the structure was brought to life through community workshops where volunteers and collaborators helped cut, connect, and suspend each element — every scale representing a single droplet within the greater stream.

Reacting to wind and light, the serpent seems to breathe, shifting with the day and glowing at night. As visitors pass beneath it, they cross a symbolic threshold — between the human and the mythical, the individual and the collective, the river and the city that surrounds it.