‘Stars tell us of the infinite, of something in ourselves that is starlike. We watch and wish on stars. In loss, we look up and we pray to stars, imagining our ancestors as residing in the heavens. They are the stars and constellations in the night sky. They are the legendary elders and immortals who inhabit the past, whose influence is felt within the present and write tomorrow’s history.’
Curated by Polina Angelova
From the beginning of human history to this contemporary moment, human beings across diverse cultures and belief systems have looked into the sky to give meaning to their lives. The idea that there is a relationship between the movement of the celestial bodies and the lives of the Earth’s inhabitants has been around for thousands of years and altered the deepest understanding of our human possibilities. We still stare at the sky and wonder how those distant lights affect us here on Earth. Our calendars and systems for keeping track of time, including the seasons, the seven-day week, and the names of the days – they all derive from astrology, which nowadays might be considered as a work of literature that uses the cosmos as text.
In her highly conceptual fine art photography series the curator Polina Angelova explores destiny as a correspondence between the position of the heavenly constellations and the individual path of the human being. For the first time, a curator records тхе history and the past not just with written words and painted pictures but by creating an imaginary world, making possible a new kind of visual communication through the birth of a new curatorial language powered by Artificial Intelligence.
Like a modern Alchemist, Polina Angelova merged digital art with AI to combine celestial star maps with real images of the Holocaust Survivor Lady Zahava Kohn MBE. Polina didn’t just merge digital with analogue, but also used her cultural background, knowledge, talent and skills to invent a new curatorial language with the tools of AI. Selecting, assembling and editing an endless collection of images, Polina invented innovative ways of visual curating producing new conceptual messages for the world, thus pioneering the rise of Artificial Intelligence in Fine Arts.
Polina Angelova is the author of the ‘MAPS TO HEAVEN’ highly conceptual fine art photography series and the Founder of Hidden Identity Projects. ‘MAPS TO HEAVEN’ was part of the 12 STARS Visual History Series and the ‘A SKY OF STARS’ exhibition which was on display on 8.10-20.10.2020 at the Bulgarian Embassy in London. ‘MAPS TO HEAVEN’ is a journey both on a physical and divinely scientific level through life’s most significant moments of the Holocaust Survivor-Lady Zahava Kohn MBE. Combining the pursuit of beauty with the scientific observations of the Universe, the conceptual series shows the most intimate relationship between man, time, and the cosmos.
