Ou Es-Tu Mon A(r)mour?

Ou Es-Tu Mon A(r)mour - readymade. found leather boot, gesso, laser Simmons riflescope 4-12 x 40 SF black matte, desert camouflage tape. Size: 53 x 34 x 11 cm, 2019, Edition 1 of 5+1AP, Anton Terziev. Foto courtesy of the artist
Featured in New Social Poetry mag, issue 33, 03.2022, ISSN 2603-543X

Production credit: Vladislav Georgiev

(It's not photoshoped by the way)

Never shown in public
Original no longer exist

Anton Terziev’s Ou Es-Tu Mon A(r)mour alchemizes mundane materials into a poignant allegory of love’s contradictions. A found leather boot—primed with gesso and sheathed in desert-camouflage tape—rises like a lone sentinel, its soft contours hardened by martial pattern. Perched atop, a matte-black Simmons riflescope (4–12 × 40 SF) literalizes the obsessive gaze of desire and distrust.

The camouflage suggests emotional armor against abandonment, while the scope frames affection as a target to be acquired. In peering through its lens, viewers become both hunter and hunted, enacting the neurotic choreography of jealousy, anxiety, and loneliness. Terziev’s wry juxtaposition of nurturing form and weapons-grade optics diagnoses our desperate need for care—even as we arm ourselves against vulnerability.

In its elegant absurdity, Ou Es-Tu Mon A(r)mour holds up a mirror to our pursuit of intimacy, asking whether the very defenses we erect only amplify the distance we seek to close.