The time after an opening is a kind of lost time. For months leading up to the show you spend all your time and energy putting it together and then, suddenly, it’s over. Afterwards, you wander around in a kind of blue funk, wondering why you ever became an artist in the first place.

I was wandering around in this post-show opening funk when I came across a large, quiet crowd of people gathering outside the Corporate Commercial Bank of Bulgaria. The people were lined up around the block and there were two large men in expensive-looking matching suits standing in front of the doors of the bank, keeping the people out. People on the other side of the street were taking photographs. All of this took place in a strained silence.

Later, we went for dinner with a Bulgarian friend. She took us to a traditional Bulgarian establishment that offered folk singing and dancing. On our way to the restaurant, she told us that that morning the National Bank of Bulgaria dismissed the Board of Directors of the Corporate Commercial Bank of Bulgaria and suspended the shareholders rights, announcing it would direct the bank for the next three months.

There were many rumours about the collapse. From what I could determine from conflicting news reports, it appears a letter was leaked to the media in the morning, revealing that the chief officer of the bank was being investigated for fraud. Later in the day, the bank shut its doors and would allow no more withdrawals, but news sources reported on rich investors and corporate shareholders still withdrawing funds.

The Bulgarian restaurant was down a long corridor, deep within the bowels of the administrative building for the National Palace of Culture. The restaurant was highly decorated in Bulgarian textiles and ceramics and it bordered on both the cheesy and the authentic. There were folk singers and dancers performing to loud folk music being forced through a tinny, poor music system.

The clientele was a mix of Bulgarian families celebrating some event, with cakes and balloons, and businessmen of undetermined nationality in shirtsleeves, blazers hanging from their chairs.

We watched the spectacle of the families and the businessmen eating and dancing. The families all seemed to know the Bulgarian folk dances and they took the lead on the open dances, where the audience was brought in to participate. The businessmen were dragged out onto the dance floor. They treated the event as a burlesque. They were grinning and waving over at the table where their peers were filming them with their phones. I kept remembering the worried faces of the people lined up outside the bank.