Tenderness.
2023, reworked in 2026, fabric with original print, plastic, flexible neon
Tenderness is an installation that explores the unstable boundary between the body, clothing, and image. At the centre of the work is a transparent chiffon dress with a corseted structure — an object perceived as both protective and revealing. From its surface, abstract biomorphic forms appear to emerge, subtly distorting the silhouette and creating the sense that the body extends beyond its prescribed shape.
The dress is made from fabric printed with a magnified photographic image of human skin. The enlarged texture intensifies the motif of the “second skin,” uniting concealment and vulnerability. In this work, clothing functions as a delicate boundary between the body and its image — simultaneously protecting, shaping, and visually transforming human presence.
Tenderness 2.
2025, fabric with original print, inflatable balloons
The Tenderness" is an installation of soft, air-lled textile forms in which Katya Tsareva evokes the image of a "second skin", smooth, gleaming, and strangely alien. The work serves as a metaphor for corporeality that is both seductive and unsettling. It explores the duality of sensory experience - merging pleasure and pain, desire and aversion and invites the viewer into a fragile space between intimacy and detachment.
The Fleeting Light on Your Folds. Solo show (Part 1). Solo show.
site-specific installation, 2024
This site-specific installation features large-scale watercolors and soft textile objects by Katya Tsareva, serving as a metaphor for a second skin, so smooth and gleaming that it feels almost alien. The installation acts as a source of attraction, uniting pleasure and pain, as well as both hatred and desire.
The Fleeting Light on Your Folds
(Part 2). Solo show.
site-specific installation, 2024
The second part of the exhibition, following the Brompton show, took place at Voskhod Gallery in Basel. Displayed in the window, the exhibition featured large watercolor works alongside white sheets of watercolor paper, deliberately torn in a seemingly spontaneous manner. Bursting through the layers, the watercolors reveal corporeality as a set of surfaces with varying degrees of attraction. They reflect the experience of living in a body — a vessel marked by both vulnerability and exposure.
Excerpt from the curatorial text by Anzhela Popova, written for the exhibition “The Fleeting Light on Your Folds (Part 2)”, Voskhod Gallery, Basel, 2024
