Fast Welcome
Fast Welcome - traditional bulgarian lace & döner kebab, 6 x 20 x 6 cm., Anton Terziev, 2017
Foto courtesy of the artist
Never shown in public, original destroyed
Anton Terziev’s Fast Welcome succinctly encapsulates the tension between tradition and globalization, an interplay that resonates deeply in contemporary art discourse. At first glance, the work juxtaposes two seemingly incongruent elements—a handmade Bulgarian lace wrap and a mass-produced döner kebab. This meeting of the old-world craft with fast-food culture underscores a central concern of twenty-first-century society: how heritage and modern consumerism collide, intermingle, and redefine one another.
From an art historical perspective, Fast Welcome draws on the tradition of assemblage, in which found or everyday objects are repurposed to challenge cultural assumptions. By using a crocheted lace, a painstaking craft often associated with domesticity and Bulgarian folk heritage, Terziev underscores the care, skill, and lineage inherent in traditional textile practices. In contrast, the döner kebab—a symbol of fast, convenient, globalized cuisine—embodies modern mobility, the quick exchange of cultures, and the influx of “the foreign” into local contexts.
The work also echoes the spirit of Fluxus and Arte Povera movements in its utilization of commonplace materials—an edible object, no less—to provoke dialogue. Much like how Arte Povera employed “poor” materials to critique consumerist values, Terziev employs a widely recognized fast-food item to emphasize issues of cultural consumption and the transformation of local identity in a rapidly globalizing world.
Moreover, the notion of “welcome” in the piece’s title hints at hospitality traditions, as lace in Bulgarian culture often connotes warmth and communal gatherings. By enveloping fast food in something so intimately tied to family and heritage, Terziev prompts viewers to consider how hospitality and tradition adapt—or sometimes clash—when confronted with new cultural elements. This dynamic relationship between the handcrafted lace and the kebab points to a broader dialogue about how nations integrate or resist outside influences, be they culinary or otherwise.
In Fast Welcome, Terziev deftly balances humor and critique, producing a work that speaks to the broader global condition of blending identities. By uniting two objects that would rarely, if ever, meet under ordinary circumstances, he transforms them into a visual metaphor for the complex ways in which cultural exchange can simultaneously uphold, alter, and even subvert tradition.