The piece transforms the Bulgarian lev into a symbol of transition. The work consists of origami butterflies folded from banknotes of different denominations, each one assembled from fragments of the currency that is about to disappear from everyday circulation.

The butterfly becomes a metaphor for transformation: a currency once associated with value, stability and national identity is stripped of its economic function and given a new, fragile and almost ornamental life. The banknotes are no longer used to buy or sell, so they become objects to be observed, collected and remembered.

photos: Radostin Sedevchev / Personal archive

Presented in wooden display boxes, the butterflies resemble preserved specimens in a natural-history collection. Their shadows extend beyond their physical forms, suggesting that the disappearance of the lev is not simply a financial or political change, but also the fading of something deeply embedded in collective memory.

The title Leo Bulgaricus refers to the lion, the symbol embedded in the very name of the Bulgarian currency, lev—while giving it a Latin, almost taxonomic character. The work thus treats the lev as a species on the verge of extinction: something that belongs to the past, but whose traces remain.

Through a simple act of transformation, Leo Bulgaricus turns money into memorabilia and a national symbol into a fragile artifact of memory.

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