Whenever I Try to Dig Up a Different Version of Myself, I End Up Finding the Worst Clichè
Whenever I Try to Dig Up a Different Version of Myself, I End Up Finding the Worst Clichè/ Когато се опитвам да изровя своя нова версия, винаги се натъквам на най-тежкото клише
Schmincke oils on canvas. Size: 100 x 100 cm, 2025
Photo: © the artist
Courtesy the artist
Title credit: Svetoslav Todorov - editor writer, cultural manager
Collaborating since 2019
Anton Terziev’s oil painting Whenever I Try to Dig Up a Different Version of Myself, I End Up Finding the Worst Cliché confronts the viewer with a nonvenomous display of military shovels arrayed against a pulsating field of Bulgarian-flag hues. The thick impasto and rough, gestural strokes lend the tools a menacing corporeality, as if they could be thrust into the canvas at any moment. The repetitive choreography of shovel blades—each one a silent instrument of both entombment and excavation—speaks to the cyclical nature of nationalist rhetoric and the violence it begets.
Terziev’s deliberate juxtaposition of patriotic red, white, and green with the cold metallic gray of weaponized earth-movers underscores the contradiction at the heart of coercive power: the promise of collective identity delivered through brute force. The restless background pattern, simultaneously decorative and chaotic, evokes digital propaganda streams that amplify xenophobic narratives across borders. Overall, the painting’s tight formal coherence and charged symbolism make it a nonvenomous commentary on how the search for self can become entangled with the darkest clichés of political aggression.