Biography
Dessislava Terzieva is a Bulgarian-American contemporary artist based between Detroit and Sofia. She earned a BA in Political Science from Oakland University and an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2021 where she won the Museum Purchase Award and her work was accessioned into the permanent collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Prior to attending Cranbrook, Terzieva made a name for herself as a prominent figure in the Detroit art scene; exhibiting in off-site locations, curating independent spaces, and executing interactive and immersive installations in the public sphere. In 2021, she founded FIDANA Foundation, a non-profit organization facilitating contemporary art and interventions in public spaces using pre-existing infrastructure.
Terzieva has exhibited in the United States and internationally, including: Manifesta 14 in Pristina, Kosovo; Citronne Gallery in Athens, Greece; ART-O-RAMA in Marseille; France; KO-OP in Sofia, Bulgaria; College for Creative Studies Center Gallery in Detroit, Michigan; Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio; Æther Haga in Amsterdam, Netherlands; Huron Art Space in San Francisco, California; Mönchskirche in Salzwedel, Germany; Guck mal Günther, Kunst in Lenzburg, Switzerland; International Biennale of Santorini in Santorini, Greece; Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She has been awarded a residency at Hestia (Serbia), Bedsuy Art Residency (New York), Atelierhaus Hilmsen (Germany), and World of Co (Bulgaria).
About
Dessislava Terzieva is a contemporary artist whose practice encompasses photography, sculpture, installation, public intervention and engaged performance. Born at the sunset of the communist regime in Bulgaria, terzieva’s process and material choices reflect growing up in the flux of radical change and material scarcity. Self-taught through intuitive play and philosophical curiosity, she employs a utilitarian approach, improvising with pre-existing objects gathered from personal experience and immediate environments to explore concepts of nostalgia, (be)longing, (dis)connection and authenticity.
Her distinct visual language and conceptual investigations result from a lifetime of oscillation between two contrasting worlds: the east of her birth and the west of her migration. Through the re-contextualization of materials embedded with symbolic and cultural connotations, she engages in an act of imaginative rediscovery that not only seeks to bridge gaps between time and space, but to establish the in-between state as a place unto itself.
Gallery
Dessislava Terzieva
No Man's Land, 2022.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Yana Lozeva
- Material: Photographic prints, acrylic paint, vinyl stickers
Dessislava Terzieva
Flag for an Abstract Nation, 2022.
Site-specific
Details
- Photographer: Kalin Serapionov
- Material: Plastic bags, thread, tape, textile on flag pole
Dessislava Terzieva
UNTITLED, 2022.
Installation
Details
- Photographer: Mihail Novakov
- Material: Found objects
- Description: BILLA shopping cart, cannonball, books, banana peel, money, cell phone,
egg carton, clothes, garbage, miscellaneous objects, keys, keychains, belt buckles, plastic bags, possessions, secrets, trash, ephemera, framed mirror, photographic print, resin.
Part of the exhibtion UNTITLED at Punta gallery (2022).
Dessislava Terzieva
Illegal Alien, 2022.
Photography
Details
- Photographer: Dessislava Terzieva
- Material: Vinyl sticker on nonfunctioning building
