04/06/2026
The Cairn Within Me by Avela Admon
🌊 Looking back at Waves Before the Quake
Curated by Albena Baeva and Rene Beekman
2025, Buna vol. 3
Watching the works in Waves Before The Quake is like watching a tsunami in reverse; Waves are about to trigger earthquakes.
The Cairn Within Me by Avela Admon is a response to the cairn, or грамада (gramada) in Bulgarian, which existed in front of the Varna municipality for over a decade following Plamen Goranov’s self-immolation in 2013.
In Bulgarian folk custom, a gramada is erected when each member of the community throws a stone in a designated spot while cursing the perpetrator(s) of a particularly serious crime. The resulting pile of stones or cairn is interpreted as a symbolic grave of the perpetrators.
The Varna municipality has repeatedly removed the cairns that appeared since 2013, only for the community to resurrect them.
Avela Admon’s The Cairn Within Me is the product of all the crimes for which she feels a stone should be thrown, and a curse should be spoken. At the same time, it provides the audience with a never-ending supply of virtual stones to carry with it and cast as needed.
The Cairn Within Me has a visual resemblance to Rene Magritte’s *The Castle of the Pyrenees*. The title of this work refers to the French expression “building castles in Spain” (bâtir des châteaux en Espagne) meaning dreams or plans that are unlikely to be realized. By painting The Castle of the Pyrenees, Magritte, of course, defied the expression. Like Magritte’s castle in Spain, The Cairn Within Me reminds us of the immense power of imagination to propel us to achieve the impossible.
Photo credit