14 October 2008 | An exhibition about places by which one passes without noticing them is currently going on in such a place in Bulgaria’s capital – the Central Bath in Sofia, until October 25.

The exhibition contains photographs of and texts about such places by participating artists in the “Opening the Closed Shops” residence programme and specially selected artists from Bulgaria. The exhibition’s programme also includes screenings, talks with the artists, literary reads and performances.

Titled “Stay, stay,” the exhibition is about places that are “part of a daily route, scenery along the way, a physical presence that stays unnoticed,” according to its organisers. “As “places” they are part of a constructed environment and they have their historical, social, cultural layers, subject to registering, remembering, studying. Places changed by time or by somebody’s decision.”

Some of the places captured in the exhibition images include: a train station in Berlin; a bingo hall in the underpass of Sofia’s Central Station; a hotel in Gdansk that no longer exists; a church in Rome built in order to reinvigorate a neighbourhood; construction sites split between the present and the projected past.

The exhibition venue itself is appropriate for the show. As BalkanTravellers.com reported in July, it is expected that the project to turn Sofia’s Central Bath building, built in the Secession architectural tradition, into a Museum of the city and a spa, will be completed by April of 2009.

Since the building closed down as a public bath in 1986, it was used as a hangout by homeless people, a place for parties, a film set and sporadic cultural events. As such, it became precisely the kind of place that Sofia’s residents passed by without noticing.

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