SPONTANEOUS CONNECTIONS BETWEEN UNRELATED PHENOMENA

curated by Marina Slavova

23.06.2022 - 28.07.2022


Exhibition of the 2008-2021 BAZA award winners

Rada Bоukova (in collaboration with Lazar Lyutakov), Samuil Stoyanov, Anton Terziev, Vikenti Komitski, Leda Ekimova, Kiril Kuzmanov, Zoran Georgiev, Aleksandra Chaushova, Dimitar Shopov, Martina Vacheva, Martin Penev, Valko Chobanov, Maria Nalbantova, Marta Djourina

The annual award for young artists – BAZA, celebrates its 15th anniversary. The international project was launched in 1990 in the Czech Republic, instituted by the founder and director of the Civil Society Foundation (USA) Wendy Luers. Today, the award exists in 12 European countries and has become one of the most prestigious prizes and serious professional testimonial. Among the countries that joined the award are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, Hungary, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Albania, Montenegro and Bulgaria.

Negotiations for Bulgaria’s inclusion began in 2007. The competition was organised by the Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia. Later on, the Edmond Demirdjian Foundation joined in.

The exhibition “Spontaneous Connections between Unrelated Phenomena” is dedicated to the 15-year anniversary of BAZA. All 14 winners of the award from 2008 to 2021 will take part in it.

The exhibition invites the audience to spend time with the story of each of the authors, beyond the context of the competition for the first place. After more than two years of social isolation, inability to travel and communal insecurity implemented by the COVID pandemic, the world barely managed to catch its breath before being caught up in yet another international crisis, namely the tragedy of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Turning the focus back to the individual, instead of looking at society as a whole, is a key tool in dealing with the concerns of the world that surrounds us. The idea of ​​intimacy and sharing, of empathizing with personal history, seems more important than any political criticism or public discourse in this time of trouble. That is precisely why the audience is being invited to become part of the dialogue between the individual works, to look for the connections between them and to formulate their own questions and answers.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, which includes works by the 14 artists from different creative periods.

With the support of the National Culture Fund and the Trust for Mutual Understanding, New York.

The catalogue BAZA XV in PDF format can be downloaded from HERE.

Images