Silent Islands, Brioni, 2009-2018

A mile off the coast of Croatia, sheltered in the northern Adriatic, lie the Brioni Islands – a hidden paradise with a complex past. If the Brioni Islands are known at all, it is as the luxurious private retreat of Marshall Tito, the Communist leader of Yugoslavia until his death in 1980. But Brioni’s history runs deep, and many stories lie hidden beneath the surface.
Over the past decade, SofijaSilvia has returned again and again to the Brioni Islands: walking, looking, taking notes and making photographs. Grouped together in different series – such as ‘Abode’, Rooms’, Lobby', ‘Landscape’, ‘Unearthed’, Crossings' and ‘Beauty of the Dead’ — SofijaSilvia’s images offer a series of poetic encounters with the islands as places of multiple pasts and overlapping presents. The project provides a highly personal insight into a place of unique history, it also opens up wider questions about private and public owner- ship, about wildness and control, and about the never-ending process of negotiation between humanity and the natural world.

(you can read the entire text by Tom Jeffreys in 'Texts')