Martina Vacheva is presenting her new exhibition “Sex and the City” - the final stage of her work in relation to the BAZA Award for Young Bulgarian Artists which she won in 2017. Her approach is characterized by a healthy combination of equal parts enjoyment and critique of popular culture, its typical images, narrative ways, and questionable yet vital values. The author is showing new works. Some are related to her residency in New York as part of the award, while others are a continuation of her on-going interests in art this time channeled through biographical facts – years ago the artist was employed as a dancer in a ballet company for modern dance in Plovdiv, which engaged with a variety of genres…
Martina Vacheva
Sex and the City
Martina Vacheva is an artist working in diverse media and techniques – from painting and drawing to ceramics. She is showing new paintings augmented through object-intervention into an installation, as well as some of her popular fanzines. She is part of the youngest generation of contemporary Bulgarian artists – the micro-community that has come to life in Plovdiv over the last years. These artists are equally global and provincial; career-minded, workaholic, and ambitious while at the same time being united around a fluid group identity and solidarity that allow them to develop new approaches – free, full of life enjoyment, lacking restrictions in either style or media, marked by wealth of information, and calm/savvy while navigating the complex environment of the contemporary visual practices, art markets and community interrelations both in Bulgaria and abroad.
The exhibition is accompanied by an especially written text by the artist Valko Chobanov who is part of the same scene in Plovdiv and the winner of the BAZA Award for 2019.
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Martina Vacheva (b. 1988 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria) lives and works in Plovdiv and Brittany, France. Graduated from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, majoring in Illustration and Book and Print Graphics. In 2012 she specialized in the book illustrator’s class of Georg Barber (ATAK) at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, Germany.
Solo exhibitions: “Roots / Wurzeln” – Museum Folkwang, Essen (2019); “Mud” - Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv (2018); “Sereality” (2016, curator Vera Mlechevska) - Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv. Among her participations in group exhibitions are: Art Brussels (2019); 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2019, curated by Slavs and Tatars); “EVN Collection: Franz Kapfer/Lazar Lyutakov/Martina Vacheva”, SKLAD, Plovdiv, (2019, curated by Thomas D. Trummer); “Baywatch”, KVOST, Berlin (2018, curated by Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher); “Dias de Romance”, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires (2018, curated by Carmen Ferreyra); “Schock und Schrecken”, Goethe-Institut Bulgarien, Sofia (2018, curated by Stefka Tsaneva); “The Image is no Longer Available”, Credo Bonum Gallery, Sofia (2017, curated by Vesela Nozharova); “Lifestyles and Still Life”, Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes, London (2016, curated by Vera Mlechevska), etc. Martina Vacheva is the 2017 BAZA Award for Young Visual Artists winner. Her works are in the Art Collection Telekom, Berlin; EVN Collection, Vienna; Metropolitan Museum Library Collection, New York; and Gaudenz B. Ruf Collection, Zurich/Vienna.
Image Gallery
https://www.ica-sofia.org/en/ica-gallery/exhibitions/item/432:sex-and-the-city#sigProIde7fd5cf95b