Sasho Violetov - It's fine!

I was born in Sofia, where I currently live and work. I hold a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mural painting from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia. I have participated in solo and group exhibitions, festivals, and biennials in Bulgaria and the United Kingdom. In 2022, I had the privilege of being a resident in the residency program at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

A man in a perfectly tailored business suit is folded into the precise geometry of a square. Every bend in his body appears intentional, as if he has willingly transformed himself into an architectural element. The square is immaculate—stable, efficient, predictable. His face remains composed, neither smiling nor suffering, embodying the emotional neutrality expected in professional environments.
One hand protrudes from the composition, giving an unmistakable thumbs-up. At first glance, it communicates approval, success, resilience, and the familiar corporate message that everything is under control. The gesture reassures the viewer that the figure has adapted perfectly to his condition.
The work's conceptual core lies in a hidden truth: the thumbs-up only exists because the man has been folded into the square. If the body were unfolded into its natural, upright posture, the exact same hand would point downward—a universal sign of disapproval, failure, or refusal. The positive signal is therefore not genuine but manufactured by distortion.
Approval is produced by compression. The more the body conforms to the imposed structure, the more convincing its message that "everything is okay." Freedom, however, reverses that message. Outside the system, the body's true position reveals the opposite sentiment.
The square symbolizes institutional order—corporate culture, bureaucracy, productivity, and social expectation. The suit reinforces the figure as an everyman of modern professional life, someone whose identity has become inseparable from performance. Rather than expressing authentic emotion, the body has learned to communicate the message demanded by its environment.
The piece questions how often people publicly signal satisfaction while privately embodying the opposite. It suggests that optimism can become a byproduct of constraint—that systems capable of bending individuals into acceptable forms can also manipulate the very gestures by which those individuals appear to consent. The work invites viewers to ask whether the "thumbs up" is an expression of genuine approval, or simply the posture required to fit inside the square.