Caroline Jean Bartunek, managing editor at The Georgia Review writes: “While Nikolova has often drawn inspiration from Northern California’s vistas and from artistic forebears who have documented them, her landscapes are not necessarily “about” that specific place. Rather, they are transformed to the point that they may be mountains and valleys from memory, dreams, or visions. Nikolova reflects that in her art she may have been searching for the home she’d never known. “When I first started making the abstract landscape photograms, I understood that, at least in part, the work had something to do with transcending the feeling of never having had a mother land,” she says. “That the work was in fact about feeling a sense of belonging in the landscape; that the landscape had the capacity to receive me beyond my identity: beyond the idea of my history, gender, ethnicity, profession, etc. I didn’t want the work to be about trauma or victimhood, or my personal story. I would like the work to be experienced as a meditation, a prayer even, in the spirit of devotional, anonymous art.”
ELEMENTAL FORMS, HORIZONS NO. 2, 2018
Polyptych, Unique Wet Plate Collodion
20.3 x 25.4 cm
102 x 102 inches
