Hello Troj is a book that took over three decades to experience and 12 years to write. It is a book about growing up as a young female arts protégé during the last decade of Communism in Eastern Europe, in a society shaped by a rapidly disintegrating censorship apparatus struggling to sustain itself, in the world of the so-called “Intelligencia” governed by middle-aged white men, many of them prone to predatory behavior and accustomed to getting their own way. It is a deeply personal and unapologetic coming-of-age story that circles around the suicide of a younger brother and trying to figure oneself out in the context of dystopia and chaos.
But this is also a book about growing up in a family of heroes and madmen, all of them insanely creative but never recognized as anything but average, invisible, “just regular folks”. There is nothing “regular” or “average” about them.
Iva Troj is an internationally acclaimed contemporary artist born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She studied art and design in the US and Scandinavia before establishing an art practice in the United Kingdom in 2012.
“Hello Troj” is based on her experiences growing up as a young protege during the last decade of Communism in Eastern Europe.
Iva Troj is a PhD and has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her work is in private and museum collections in the UK, France, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, China, United States, South Africa, South Korea and Japan.