The city’s ecosystem is facing major challenges due to growing urbanisation. This leads to pollution, habitat destruction, unnatural and noisy environments for small inhabitants and other local factors that drive away or destroy individual animals or entire groups. The result of such negative impacts also affects the daily life of citizens, reducing the quality of life in the city.
My idea is to create a number of miniature porcelain figurines (it is possible to incorporate or adapt other materials) to serve as monuments to representatives of the biodiversity of invertebrates, mammals, amphibians, fish and birds inhabiting the areas of Sofia. They will be decorated with bouquets of flowers as a tribute to the sacrifice these small citizens unwittingly make so that people can live in a more dynamic and “modern” urban environment. It is my hope that these miniatures, though sometimes difficult to see, like the animals themselves, will provoke thought and discussion about the care of urban fauna, especially in the embryonic stages of landscape planning.

Alina Papazova (1993) is a visual artist based in Sofia. In 2023, she graduated with a PhD in Visual Plastic Arts from New Bulgarian University, where she also specialized in the Master’s program Ceramics and Porcelain. Digital Forms”. Alina works with various media, among which ceramics and drawing are the leading ones, and in recent years she has been experimenting with textiles, sculpture, animation and 3D.  

The video was produced with the assistance of Stoyan Georgiev and the entire ROBO LAB team.

* The name “Island In the Sun” is taken from the song of the same name released in 1999 by the Californian rock band Weezer. In 2001, American director Spike Jones filmed a second version of an official video for the song, in which the band members are shown playing and interacting with various wild and domestic animals – bears, baby lions, monkeys, cats, etc.