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In Levietan, I return to the Aegean with a sculptural installation shaped by the island of Limnos and the layered histories it holds—both visible and submerged. The work responds directly to a recent underwater discovery: a 2,500-year-old Greek trading vessel found off the island’s coast. I don’t approach this archaeological trace as something to reconstruct, but as a starting point for thinking through the relationship between material, memory, and environment. Installed within a Natura 2000 protected area—a European ecological network designed to safeguard biodiversity—Levietan doesn’t simply occupy the landscape, but enters into a fragile exchange with it. The terrain itself, marked by sea winds, salt air, and vulnerable ecosystems, informs both the form and the process of the work. I remain aware that the sculpture exists within a living system that resists permanence, and I let that precarity stay present in the work. The installation from my earlier exhibition Raw Perspectives at +359 Gallery in Sofia is reimagined here in the open landscape of Limnos. The oxidized steel, fractured metal surfaces, and symbolically charged imagery are no longer contained within a gallery architecture. What was once urban and enclosed is now exposed—temporary, permeable, and shaped by its surroundings. The title Levietan refers obliquely to the Leviathan a figure that moves across centuries as sea monster, political metaphor, and cosmic force. By altering the spelling, I keep the term unstable, resisting a fixed reading. In this context, Levietan becomes something unresolved: a structure suspended between ruin and vessel, empire and disappearance, nature and history. The work follows cycles of collapse and transformation how materials absorb time, how landscapes preserve what is otherwise buried or ignored. I am less interested in myth as escape than as a way of reading what persists beneath official narratives. The sculpture doesn’t illustrate the past; it listens to its distortions. I work with the paradox of preservation: how to engage with a site that is constantly shifting. Levietan is not a monument. It is an interruption a reminder that fragility and resilience are not opposites, but conditions that exist together
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![Raw perspective]( "Raw perspective")
infoSite-specific installation in water tower
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![''Heavy sense of feelings '']( "''Heavy sense of feelings ''")
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![Galvanised]( "Galvanised")
infocopper ,metal ,oysters,glass,9V battery,hydrogen peroxide,blue vitriol
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infometal
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!["oyster row"]( "\"oyster row\"")
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infocopper, print on plastic
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First video part of the projeckt ''Lobster and shrimp on my plate, i want my pockets so fat they inflate'' collaboration with Robin Whitehouse
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!["From stone to smoke"']( "\"From stone to smoke\"'")
infobelgain stone, quartz, vape,algae
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![Lobster and shrimp on my plate, I want my pockets so fat they inflate]( "Lobster and shrimp on my plate, I want my pockets so fat they inflate")
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infobelgain stone
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![the Replicants]( "the Replicants")
infoPLA,metal,stone, plexiglass
Todor Rabadzhiyski works across sculpture, installation, painting, printmaking, and land art. His practice begins with places marked by transformed industrial structures, altered landscapes, fragments of infrastructure, and environments where human intention meets forces beyond its control.
Working with metal, stone, clay, water, and found materials, he follows processes of corrosion, erosion, accumulation, casting, and decay. Materials are approached as carriers of memory, storing traces of labor, extraction, time, and change. Rather than fixed objects, his works often emerge as temporary conditions in which matter continues to shift, settle, and transform.
Responding to specific sites, Rabadzhiyski explores the space between the industrial and the organic, the constructed and the accidental. His interventions reveal hidden relationships between landscape, architecture, and the systems that shape them, allowing the visible and invisible to coexist.
His work inhabits a territory where permanence dissolves into process, where ruins become beginnings, and where meaning remains unsettled. Through material transformation and spatial encounters, he creates situations that invite reflection on the fragile balance between human activity, natural forces, and the passage of time.
Websites
Social media
Curriculum vitae
Education
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2018 - 2023BA Fine Arts (sculpture) Den Haag, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten diploma
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2014 - 2018National School of Fine Arts Iliya Petrov diploma
exhibitions
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2026"Lobster and shrimp on my plate, I need my pockets so fat they inflate" vol ,4 Back of the kitchen Durst Britt and Mayhew the hague , Netherlands "Lobster and shrimp on my plate, I need my pockets so fat they inflate" is a collaborative project by artists Todor Rabadzhiyski and Robin Phoenix Whitehouse )that started in 2021 and delves into the culture and changing economy associated with lobsters. In the fourth showcase (Vol. 4: Back of the Kitchen) of their ongoing project the artists look specifically at the moment the lobster enters the restaurant kitchen, tracing the transformation of a sea creature into a symbol of status and celebration. Thereto they have transformed the Frontspace of the gallery into the back of a kitchen, framed from the artists' own roles during spells of time working at Bistro-mer, a renowned seafood restaurant in The Hague. In the kitchen, the lobster loses all dignity; there, the lobster is not a symbol, but a product. It is chilled, moved, prepared. These actions are repetitive and often invisible. They form the basis of a system in which the end product takes centre stage. Of course, before the lobster becomes a status symbol, it must first be killed. The artists don’t shy away from this reality, nor do they sensationalise it. The violence is simply part of the system, one that’s mirrored in the art world, where ideas are dissected, repurposed, and served up as something else entirely. The artists’ choice of materials follows the same logic. Each material carries its own history and its own value system. Porcelain refers to tradition and fragility, aluminium to industry and reproducibility and marble to durability and canonization. By for example realising the same mold of a single lobster in different materials, it becomes visible how value shifts. And how quickly something is suddenly called “timeless.” It is not an aesthetic choice, but an analytical one. What changes when an object changes material? What remains the same? And how does that relate to the way we look at art? Much like how, in a restaurant, different hands work on one and the same dish the paintings in the exhibition are composed of elements created separately by the artists. The drawings on the lids of empty oyster boxes, were created during restaurant working hours and contain personal notes on the reverse side, often remarking on the long hours and labour involved. The first three iterations of the project were respectively shown at Laak Club, The Hague in 2021 (Vol. 1: The Catch) TRIXIE artist-run space, The Hague in 2022 -Vol. 2: The Market; and Vol.3 TSwimming Pool, Sofia www.durstbrittmayhew.com/exhibitions/74-lobster-and-shrimp-on-my-plate-i-need/ Duo
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2026Odyssea: Le sel de la terre Punta gallery Sofia , Bulgaria Odyssea: Le sel de la terre a collaboration between Spiaggia Libera and PUNTA Gallery Curated by: Sacha Guedj Cohen, Camille Velluet, Boyana Dzhikova Artists: Nina Boughanim, Elvire Ménétrier, Marilou Poncin, Valentin Vert, Petja Ivanova, Todor Rabadzhiyski After a phantasmagorical journey from the ocean depths to the surface of the earth, from the mythical fish-woman to a contemporary emancipated figure during the show presented at Buna festival, Varna “Odyssea – The Song of the Sirens” – a nebulous, post-capitalist world now emerges, inhabited by creatures seeking change. “The Salt of the Earth” thus proposes exploring a different space-time, one that is hard to place in a linear history and resembles a narrative of anticipation. Salt, known for its corrosive and purifying properties, materializes here as piles of charred debris within which the artists’ works unfold. *** So, how do we imagine the future? Within PUNTA gallery, two directions surface. The first one concerns the individual’s innate connection to the organic world, a return to biomatter and a rethinking of human progress.This appears in the works of Todor Rabadzhiyski, in which the visual language of raw nature—mud, roots, and mold—undergoes metamorphoses. From abstract forms to human body parts and back, his works oscillate between order and chaos, gesturing towards life’s beginning and the inevitable return to the soil/to earth, the cycle starting again. puntagallery.com/Odyssea-Le-sel-de-la-terre Group
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2023View with a room Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 45, Berlin Berlin , Germany pop-up presentation by POSTA SPACE and PUNTA GALLERY with works by Tsvetomira Borisova, Martin Penev, Todor Rabadzhiyski In collaboration with Susanne Prinz, supported by SteDi-Stiftung. The exhibition VIEW WITH A ROOM presents 3 artists, active on the Bulgarian scene - Tsvetomira Borisova, Martin Penev and Todor Rabadzhyiski, who will create an in situ installation for the vitrines and office spaces at Rosa Luxemburg Platz, through approaches, challenging conventional understandings of inner and outer space, foreign and known.Tsvetomira Borisova’s work deals with one of the first design objects in human history to satisfy the need of a regulated filter between body and reality - the blinds. Blinds serve a double purpose - to hide and reveal what's private to the outside world depending on their owner’s desires, and, reciprocally, to regulate what one would like to see, and so, know, from the external. In a way they are a tool for supporting the persona and protecting the self, of validating existence (here is my body, unconditionnally) and encountering reality through the “strange foreign bodies” of others. Blinds are a border space and, as borders usually do, they serve as a passage. In her work Tsvetomira reveals this symbolic place between the self and the foreign, where lays the desire to see and to be seen, and, more importantly, be seen in a specific way, achieved by, among other methods, keeping secrets. Todor Rabadzhiyski’s work transcends between the volumes of the material world we inhabit and the flatness of the two-dimensional. First, there is a line, then a shape, generated by connecting dots in an invisible coordinate system. Fragments of reality are translated into abstract forms. Finally, the work is granted properties of volume, in the body of sculpture, as if breathing life into a sketch. His sculptural forms, however, keep within the history of the drawing plane. Rabadzhiyski’s sculptures undergo a process, similar to one when editing in Photoshop. When using it, usually an image is being worked over in a few layers simultaneously. Finally, the image is “flattened”, and all layers merge into one, compressed and equalized. Similarly, in Todor’s work landscape and focal point inhabit the same axis, none dominating the other - a compressed version of reality. puntagallery.com/VIEW-WITH-A-ROOM Group
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2023Galavnised Punta Gallery Sofia, Bulgaria Rome wasn't burned in a day first solo show, Galvanised. The exhibition includes installation, sculpture and prints by the young artist made especially for this presentation.Seeing the world as a construction, environmental, political, economic or cultural, is not enough. We need to understand the powers at action and the processes catalyzed by them that change the reality and connect all these spheres.Todor Rabadzhiyski's installation in Punta is not only present in the gallery space, it is happens there. An iron shape resembling a gauntlet from a medieval knight's armor is placed in an aquarium with Ammonium Sulfate and connected to a battery to create a closed circuit through which electricity flows. As a result of the process, galvanization, the structure of the metal is altered and changes colour, but also strengthens and protects it from corrosion.The iron hand speaks inevitably of power. The power that holds in its grip systems of extraction and distribution of resources, all that we get from the earth, that maintains the speed of development, the speed of consumption. The oil to which modernity is addicted and the battery lithium to which the market is plugged. Behind the political justifications of power are strategies for harnessing these resources, but the motivation of the processes is constantly translated and interpreted in a political context. More than just shadow theater, this process validates ideas, believes and cultural axioms.The structure is tempered; the iron hand never rusty.Free lines cut into the metal run through Rabadzhiyski's sculptures like waves frozen in mid-air. The spaced layers of the metal surface are in a process of mimicry with the natural forms placed within the installation, oyster shellsz whose surface has been formed in a similar way over a long period of time. Time creates forms, the artist mimics their appearance. History creates structures. Like lava on pause, Rabadzhiyski's sculptures capture time in material. The exhibition forms a model of a complex ecological system in which processes of fortification and decay create an intense visual environment, and metaphors transport meaning in a web of forms and meanings. puntagallery.com/Todor-Rabadzhiyski Solo
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2022Lobster and shrimp on my plate, I want my pockets so fat they inflate Trixie The Hague , Netherlands After a year long collaborative process the artists are concluding the project and highlighting the initial point of interest. Following the lobster and its changing meaning through time, they investigated the act of eating lobsters and the culture in which lobster is more then just the food and more a status symbol. The cynical and performative acts in Trixie will be paired with the presentation of two video works that were filmed in Bierkade canal outside of Trixie and an installation of ceramic animals in lobster cages. “Lobsters in the sea, its climbed the economic ladder, rising from the ocean’s depths, food for poor people and prisoners, all the way to a fancy restaurant, portraying high-class toxic hierarchies. But what has the Lobsters felt? They’ve been boiled and cut from their back to the tip of their tale they’ve been snapped and cracked, squished and licked, sucked from their strong shell transformed into the idea of hedonism and affluence.” www.trixiethehague.nl/events/lobster-and-shrimp-on-my-plate-i-want-my-pockets-so-fat-they-inflate-robin-whitehouse-and-todor-rabadzhiyski/ Duo
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2022''Distant memory" Grey space in the midlle The Hague , Netherlands During hoogtje #71 thespectrum.space blurs the line between club, performance, and exhibition at The Grey Space in the Middle with “A distant memory” - asking the question of what feeling remains after a night out. flashing lights, sweaty walls, smoky jackets, vibrating floors - distant memories of a club night that fill us with energy and soak us back into the night, week by week. But what remains after? How can we capture the fleeting joys of a night out? What makes it so magical? So addictive to come back and drift away in the music? What are the artifacts, the materialized memories that remain after waking up the next morning? The artists of “MOVE! A distant memory” materialize these fleeting memories in their works through their own lens, capturing the multiplexity of this feeling. For one night, artists, musicians and makers transform The Grey Space into an interdisciplinary playing field that combines club, performance, and exhibition to explore and experience the distant memories that bring us together during a night. Taking us on a journey from a distant reflection back into the bumping reality of the night This is what the artists during ‘a distant memory’ aim to create - through various mediums, they materialize their interpretation of this feeling - this gazing memory of the last night out. While the upstairs will reflect the visual essence of clubbing, the basement will feed you with its sonic essence - Giving you everything you need for a night to remember. todorrab.net/#project4 Group
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2021BEYOND BINARIES TENT Rotterdam , Netherlands In a two-month project with TENT, young artists from the WdKA and KABK will engage in a dialogue and collaborative working process. The students will take their inspiration from the Dolf Henkes Award exhibition on view at TENT until July.This project is part of an annual collaboration between TENT, the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.Warm thanks to tutors and guest tutors Karin Arink, Yair Callender, Sandim Mendes, Kevin Osepa, Koes Staassen, Antoinette Vonder Muehll and Geo Wyeth, and project coordinator Adelheid Smit. www.tentrotterdam.nl/en/educatie/beyond-binaries/ Group
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2021
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--As is where is LAAK,Verheeskade 321, Group
Projects
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2025
Levietan Collect Gallery Limnos grecee , Netherlands collect-gallery.com/2025/07/30/limnos-land-art-2025/ '' In June 2025, a new chapter of the Limnos Land Art project unfolds with the unveiling of Levietan, a sculptural installation Set within the Natura 2000 protected zone near Keros Blue Hotel, this evolving site , In Levietan, I return to the Aegean with a sculptural installation shaped by the island of Limnos and the layered histories it holds both visible and submerged. The work responds directly to a recent underwater discovery: a 2,500-year-old Greek trading vessel found off the island’s coast. I don’t approach this archaeological trace as something to reconstruct, but as a starting point for thinking through the relationship between material, memory, and environment. Installed within a Natura 2000 protected area a European ecological network designed to safeguard biodiversity Levietan doesn’t simply occupy the landscape, but enters into a fragile exchange with it. The terrain itself, marked by sea winds, salt air, and vulnerable ecosystems, informs both the form and the process of the work. I remain aware that the sculpture exists within a living system that resists permanence, and I let that precarity stay present in the work. The installation from my earlier exhibition Raw Perspectives at +359 Gallery in Sofia is reimagined here in the open landscape of Limnos. The oxidized steel, fractured metal surfaces, and symbolically charged imagery are no longer contained within a gallery architecture. What was once urban and enclosed is now exposed temporary, permeable, and shaped by its surroundings. The title Levietan refers obliquely to the Leviathan a figure that moves across centuries as sea monster, political metaphor, and cosmic force. By altering the spelling, I keep the term unstable, resisting a fixed reading. In this context, Levietan becomes something unresolved: a structure suspended between ruin and vessel, empire and disappearance, nature and history. The work follows cycles of collapse and transformation how materials absorb time, how landscapes preserve what is otherwise buried or ignored. I am less interested in myth as escape than as a way of reading what persists beneath official narratives. The sculpture doesn’t illustrate the past; it listens to its distortions. I work with the paradox of preservation: how to engage with a site that is constantly shifting. Levietan is not a monument. It is an interruption—a reminder that fragility and resilience are not opposites, but conditions that exist together.
Sales/Works in collections
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2023''dRAWing'' The Singer -Zahariev Fondation Sofia , Bulgarije metal plate, 2m x 2m
Publications
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201525th International Biennial Exhibition of Modern Exlibris Malbork Catalog Muzeum Zamkowe w Malborku Malbork , Poland biennale.zamek.malbork.pl/index.php?p=aktualnosci&archiwum=1&&lang=en ISBN 978-83-60518-74-8
Awards and grants
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2025Sofia , Bulgaria
Representation
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Secondary art-related activities
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2021 - 2021Mediator and caretaker at West, Den Haag; As A part of Dries Verhove projeckt "'Broeders verheft u ter vrijheidn'' ,