Deni Tsankova

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Deni Tsankova is a recent Photography and Video BA graduate of Belfast School of Art. She uses staged photography to visualise philosophical and psychological ideas such as misinformation and inductive and deductive reasoning. Tsankova is also interested in documentary photography relating to human behaviour, curiosities and scientific environments.

In her latest body of work, she explores ideas around self-care and how it can be viewed not simply as an individual desire to be well but as an industry which, through its marketing, instils feelings of paranoia and vulnerability. She takes as a starting point typical food and beauty labelling like ‘chemical free’ and ‘100% natural’ and considers how far from aiding self-care, labelling can lead to a false sense of safety that can be detrimental to long-term health. To make her work, Tsankova gathers substances that are said to be helpful, mixes them with otherwise ordinary materials, and creates sculptural and abstract photographs. The use of spirulina powder, chia seeds and bleach in the photographs underline the tension between the alluring and harmful.