In "This month" section, artnewscafe bulletin offers a wide selection of exhibitions, events, and open calls in the field of contemporary art in Bulgaria – Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Veliko Tarnovo, Kazanlak and in Europe.
The monthly bulletin strives to offer an accessible, thoughtful, and quality information about what’s happening on the Bulgarian and European visual arts stage. artnewscafe bulletin started in 2008 as a project of Open Arts Foundation. In July 2022 the bulletin joined Open Art Files as a permanent collaboration offering the monthly bulletin also in English.
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Desislava Mileva
artnewscafe bulletin anniversary cover, 2026.
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SOFIA - PLOVDIV - VARNA - KAZANLAK
SOFIA
¬ Art 36 Gallery and the echoes of memory / documentary exhibition / curated by Nadezhda Dzhakova / Sofia Arsenal – Museum of contemporary art, 2, Cherni Vrah Blvd. / March 4 - April 19. Art 36 Gallery was the first private gallery in Sofia, founded by Kamelia Chekarlieva-Mincheva. Started in a time of turbulent political changes, the gallery actively participated both in the early events on the art market in Bulgaria, and in the process of building a freely organised art scene. The exhibition includes photographs by Ani Petrova—a true friend of the gallery and the artists, selected portraits of Kamelia painted by some of her favourite artists and friends: Genko Genkov, Stanimir Zhelev, Atanas Atanasov, Galab Galabov and Donka Pavlova, as well as recollections of artists such as Lyuben Genov, Ivan Milev and Stefan Lyutakov. https://tinyurl.com/9k8k3jvb
¬ Elena Karamihaylova / … And I painted on alone / retrospective exhibition / National Gallery, The Palace, 1 Knyaz Alexander I Square / February 26 - May 31. Elena Karamihaylova is among the first academically trained women artists in Bulgaria. Having passed through the studios of distinguished painters in Vienna and Munich, she used the achievements of Impressionism to hone her brushwork. Her works are an example of liberation from academicism and a move towards a light and luminous style of painting. From today’s vantage point, her significant place in Bulgarian visual culture can only be reinforced. The marking of the anniversary is an initiative of art historians Ramona Dimova and Plamen Petrov, whose research work is the basis of the exhibitions in Kazanlak and Shumen in 2025. https://tinyurl.com/59d3fezb
¬ Nikolay Panayotov / Lunatically / anniversary exhibition / curated by Boryana Valchanova and Vessela Christova-Radoeva / National Gallery, Kvadrat 500, 1 19th February Str. / March 5 - May 31 The exhibition marking the 70th anniversary of artist Nikolay Panayotov, outlines the trajectory of a long journey, where reality has always been merely a starting point. This exhibition brings together the artist’s key themes, images and attitudes that define his visual world: freedom of imagination, rejection of the canon, an ironic perspective on history, and the eternal feeling of flight. https://tinyurl.com/3rjx9yx6
¬ Christo and Jeanne-Claude / Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95 / anniversary exhibition / curated by Gergana Mihova / National Gallery, Kvadrat 500, 1 19th February Str. / November 4 - March 22. The National Gallery (Sofia, Bulgaria) is opening its first exhibition dedicated to the legacy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, marking the 90th anniversary of the artists’ birth. The museum’s first acquisition of Christo’s iconic work Wrapped Reichstag (Project for Berlin) from 1986, along other original collages, will be officially presented to the public. With this exhibition, the National Gallery also commemorates three major anniversaries of the artists’ visionary projects celebrated in 2025: 20 years since The Gates in New York City, 30 years since Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin and 40 years since The Pont Neuf Wrapped in Paris. These milestones represent not only significant moments in the artistic journey of Christo and Jeanne-Claude but also landmark events that transformed the cultural history of Europe. https://tinyurl.com/bdeyueh6
¬ Driant Zeneli / If I Don’t Know What Will Happen Tomorrow, It Could Be Wonderful / solo show / curated by Martina Yordanova and Vasil Vladimirov / National Gallery, Kvadrat 500, 1 19th February Str. / February 5 - March 29. The solo exhibition by Driant Zeneli presents a video installation that approaches uncertainty not as a lack or failure, but as an active position and a space for imagination. The exhibition brings together four video works produced between 2011 and 2023, each originating from a different trilogy in the artist’s practice. Rather than forming a retrospective, the selection traces a consistent artistic method in which attempts are undertaken with full awareness of their likely failure. https://tinyurl.com/y7rfzbd7
¬ Mirena Zlateva / Shift in focus / solo show / The Vera Nedkova House Museum, 2, 11 August St. / January 21 - June 12. Mirena Zlateva presents a selected collection of bijoux and carvings, where the boundary between sculpture and jewellery gradually blurs and melts away. In her works, the artist explores, analyses and makes parts and volumes cohere through the prism of her personal lens and sensitivity. In the exhibition, we discover more of a narrative about the impact of construction and form fashioned as an original sculpture on the human body. Displayed in this way, the works are not simply bijoux or visual accents, but sculptural forms, deliberately and outstandingly voluminous (rings, necklaces, brooches), which, from a functional point of view, arouse a sense of discomfort, but at the same time, a desire to feel and touch them. https://tinyurl.com/bdhkpze6
¬ Some Time Before the End / group show / Vaska Emanuilova Gallery, 15 Yanko Sakazov Blvd. / March 5 - May 10. The exhibition stems from the desire to set aside the “code” we sometimes use when speaking about contemporary art. It brings together works by Adelina Popnedeleva, Boris Missirkov / Georgi Bogdanov, Krassimir Terziev, Luchezar Boyadjiev, and Nadezhda Oleg Lyahova from the collection of Sofia City Art Gallery, and places them in dialogue with a new short story by Joanna Elmy, written especially for the project. The title is borrowed from the writer’s text, which enters into conversation with the artworks and offers a new framework for experiencing them. Inspired by the works, the story is their immediate literary echo. https://tinyurl.com/yh5hkzd6
¬ Beautiful Days. Exhibition of the Painting Section / general exhibition / UBA, 6 Shipka Str. / March 6 - April 3. “Today, in a situation of regional wars, humanitarian catastrophes and dark forebodings, the name “Beautiful Days” can sound cynical and ironic, provoke a reaction of resistance and rebellion against the oppressive reality. It is possible to awaken fantasy-dream worlds and personal utopias with the promise of future beautiful days. In all possible readings of the thematic orientation, there is potential for a lively creative reaction.” - Prof. Stanislav Pamukchiev, Secretary of the Painting Section https://tinyurl.com/2f2vdzxa
¬ Sasmita Mishra / Noah / solo show / UBA, 6 Shipka Str. / March 14 - 21. Sasmita Mishra Sahu has been developing as an artist for over 27 years. She is a painter, graphic artist and art historian. She works in the field of oil and gouache painting, and also creates graphic prints using the techniques of woodcut and screen printing. She is also an art historian with research in the field of illuminated manuscripts from India from the 15th–16th centuries. Sasmita's works combine abstract and figurative motifs. This reflects both her training under the British abstract artist David Lendrum, and her Indian heritage with a strong tradition of narrative. https://tinyurl.com/2mtzx8hx
¬ Nedko Solakov / The Little Ones / solo show / curated by Iara Bubnova / ICA - Sofia, 134 Vasil Levski Blvd. / February 26 - May 3. “The current exhibition further confirms Nedko Solakov’s unique ability to combine different types of visual language in the form of polysemantic stories, based on deeply personal experiences of aggressions engendered by socio-political reality. Each one of the seven pictorial universes is a small emotional story, familiar and understandable to everyone: the many frustrations, including political ones, as well as the few satisfactions from art and nature, calming, balancing depression, achieving nirvana, formulated as disappearance. The entirety of ordinary human life, told and shown on the canvases in a sequence determined by the author.” - Iara Bubnova https://tinyurl.com/3epm9xns
¬ Krasimir Terziev / Base and Superstructure / solo show / Sarieva Gallery @ DOT, Sofia, 46, Bratya Miladinovi str., Women’s Market / March 12 – April 26. The exhibition features a series of new works from 2026 created specifically for the project, alongside the artist’s early work Angels and Chimneys (1994), outlining a distinctive programmatic line within his practice. Perspective and light emerge as key formal and conceptual devices through which the works reflect both the artist’s long-standing еnquiries and contemporary socio-political transformations in Bulgaria and globally. Terziev also references an earlier series in which he rearranges buildings from Sofia’s city center into a new symbolic order through photomontage. With this exhibition, Terziev continues his exploration of the urban center initiated in the large-scale installation „Between the Past Which Is About to Happen and the Future Which Has Already Been“ (2024–2025). https://tinyurl.com/329j3e7c
¬ Andris Eglītis / Traces. Some Instances of Encounters between Imagination and Matter / solo show / curated by Snejana Krasteva / +359 Gallery, 13A Galitchitsa Str. / February 25 - March 28. In 2025, at Plus 359 Gallery, Eglītis realized the large-scale site-specific installation “Circulation.” During this installation, several canvases were initiated at the very beginning of the exhibition period in October and left as active elements within the environment. Subjected to materials and running water, over the course of two months, they did not merely occupy the space, but evolved within it, undergoing slow and unpredictable transformation. Today, these canvases are revealed as testimonies of time, process, and interaction — “traces” that materialize the very idea of the encounter between imagination and matter. In dialogue with them, the two painting series from the Riga exhibition expand and deepen the scope of his practice for Bulgarian audiences. https://fb.me/e/96Bphupq6
¬ Plamen Dejanoff / Heritage Project / solo show / curated by Vessela Nozharova and Stephan Stoyanov / Credo Bonum Gallery, 2 Slavyanska str. / February 10 - March 29. At the center of ‘Heritage Project’ stands a specific object: a large wrought-iron entrance gate produced by an Austro-Hungarian company in 1830, installed at the entrance of the Tarnovo Synod in the mid-19th century, and damaged during the earthquake of 1913. The gate becomes an image of the cultural movements and influences that inevitably accompany human development. For the artist, his hometown of Veliko Tarnovo and the nearby village of Arbanasi, from which his family originates, become a field for in-depth research. Dejanoff employs the means of classical sculpture, knowledge of craft traditions, and restoration processes, while also researching, collecting, exhibiting, and promoting cultural artifacts around which he builds a sustainable cultural context. https://tinyurl.com/2ac9ven3
¬ Sasho Stoitzov / Passage / solo show / curated by Vladia Mihaylova / CCA Toplocentrala Gallery - Cube, 5 Emil Bersinski Str. / February 18 - March 22. “The exhibition gathers little-known works from the 1970s and 1980s—a period of specific cultural conditions in late-socialist Bulgaria—alongside notes, conceptual reflections, and drawings from the 1990s, which remained outside public attention for a long time. It enriches the narrative of contemporary art in Bulgaria by showcasing works from Vesselina Sarieva, which have rarely been publicly exhibited over time and constitute an important contribution both as collectibles and archival material. “Passage” is an exhibition presenting a process of movement across eras, languages, and understandings of art, between image and text, stability and uncertainty.” - Vladia Mihaylova https://toplocentrala.bg/en/program/visual/preminavane
¬ Krasimir Kostov / The Garden of the Bees / solo exhibition / curated by Nadezhda Pavlova and Nikola Mihov / Synthesis Gallery, 55 “Vasil Levski” Blvd / February 19 - April 4. Krasimir Kostov lives in the seaside village of Ezerets and has been shooting on film for twenty years. He makes his own prints and works with cameras similar to those his father used when he began the family tradition of documenting everyday life. For this photographer time does not matter. His photographs impress with their methodical approach, calmness, and devotion. He photographs his family, his home, the garden, the beehives, the friends who come to visit. All of this exists within a relatively small territory. At a time when many believe they must travel thousands of kilometers to find inspiration, he discovers it at the place where he wakes up each day. https://tinyurl.com/29aemcs6
¬ Valentina Sciarra / Post-Industrial Butchery / solo show / Charta Gallery, 12 Vrabcha Str. / February 15 - March 28. ”Every cuisine, from the simplest to the most complex, from east to west of the world, it’s a system of cultural combinations. And this is the theme of this exhibition project. Accepting that we are what we eat (food is one of the constituent elements of our multifaceted identity) is already very complicated in itself; but even more complicated is to imagine that in theory – and sometimes also in practice – the reverse would be possible: eat what we are.” - Valentina Sciarra https://tinyurl.com/3hz2eymn
¬ Alina Papazova and Sasho Violetov / Doomscrolling / joint show / curated by Vessela Nozharova / Little Bird Place Gallery, 7 "11th August" str. / March 5 - 28. ”Doomscrolling is a term used to describe the specific state of prolonged, compulsive scrolling through online content of a negative, anxious, or catastrophic nature — an activity that increases stress, anxiety, and the feeling of helplessness. For artists Alina Papazova and Sasho Violetov, working on this project is an opportunity to clearly formulate a problem. It is an answer to the question: how do we feel in this information trap?” - Vessela Nozharova https://fb.me/e/7mH6NC9TR
¬ Lost Forest II / group show / Doza Gallery, 52 Tsar Samuil Str. / March 5 - 19. The project presents the works of 19 contemporary Bulgarian artists who unfold their interpretations of a profound spiritual theme. Through painting, sculpture, photography, collage, installation, neon, and artistic perfumery, they explore states of the past, present, and future, delving into their roots and memories. The exhibition brings together diverse creative visions that intertwine and remind us that the forest is not merely a physical place, but a state of mind - one that we can still rediscover if we have the sensitivity to seek it. https://tinyurl.com/5hcnmpwx
¬ Vilyana Milanova / Quiet / In Silence We Listen: Clean / When Clean, We Settle / solo show / Depoo Gallery, 12 Vrabcha Str. / March 5 – 18. The project begins as an exploration of remote communication through intimate soundscapes. The work creates an experiential environment that facilitates shared narratives through storytelling. Each recording offers a minute-long glimpse into the personal moments of different individuals, inviting visitors to encounter fragments of other lives — noisy calmness, tense evening silence, tired laughter, or the subtle sounds of an unfamiliar space… https://tinyurl.com/2tst9783
¬ Juliana Hicheva / Material Imagination / solo show / Arosita Gallery, 12B Vrabcha Str. / March 5 - 19. “Mimesis is not just imitation, but a mental game from which a new form is born. Even in ancient thought, it was not understood as a copy, but as a correspondence – a connection between different levels of reality, between the micro- and macroworld. I am guided by the idea of material imagination – inspired and evoked by matter itself. In these series, I discovered the connection between mimesis and love. Mimesis does not begin with the intention of copying, but with a moment of recognition. The desire for repetition is an initial impulse that leads to the creation of a new unique form. The work arises as evidence of an encounter between the subject and the world. “ - Juliana Khicheva https://fb.me/e/4mMjP9rPf
¬ Mihail Zaimov / 200 Moments of Reality / solo show / One Gallery, 1A “Dyakon Ignatiy” Str. / March 11 - 31. What makes a photograph significant? Mihail Zaimov’s exhibition offers its own answer. The presented shots function as a visual diary of modern man - spontaneous, often shot with a phone, but built with a clear sense of composition, atmosphere and meaning. In them, photography is not simply a mechanical recording of reality, but an act of observation, memory and personal interpretation of the world. https://www.onegallery.eu/
¬ Juliana Tekova / Field of Return / solo show / HOSTGALLERY, 102 “Akad. Ivan Geshov” Bld. / March 4 - 21. The exhibition brings together painting, installation and video to explore the landscape as an experience and a constant field of return. It is also conceived as a construction of personal memory – a kind of open space in which one can experience one’s fragility, but also one’s resilience. The field is both an external space and an internal territory – a place where we free ourselves from the accumulated layers of noise, anxiety and informational overstimulation. https://fb.me/e/5GNZoClPT
¬ Angelika Radeva / Longing Horizons / solo show / DOM Concept Space, 49A "Petar Parchevich" Str. / March 6 - 25. The exhibition presents Angelika Radeva with a series of canvases that explore the transitions between light and colour, between the idea of sky and earth through warm and cold tones, dynamic and calm forms, and compositional tensions. These works offer a visual journey through emotional landscapes. The exhibition enriches the understanding of abstraction and shows how it can evolve into a narrative of the human condition, where forms serve as the language of the subconscious. https://fb.me/e/7aEErBzUG
¬ Ivan Mudov / solo show / Automatic Gallery, 11 Dunav Str. / February 19 - March 31. The gallery presents two iconic works by Ivan Mudov. “The Pavilion” is a sound installation composed of 23 loudspeakers. The project gives voice to 23 proposals rejected from the selection process for the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Each loudspeaker transmits a recorded voice reading the concept of one unrealized project. “Performing Time” presents a performance documented as a 24-hour single-channel video. In an empty space, Ivan Mudov tests his perception of time, manually moving the hands of a large wall clock. Without access to objective time, the action is entirely intuitive, exposing the tension between personal experience and standardized measurement. https://automatic.gallery/
PLOVDIV
¬ Roots / group show / curated by Vera Mlechevska / Art Affaires and Documents Foundation, Old Town, Plovdiv: Balabanov House, The Pharmacy, Danchov House, Mexican Art / March 6 - 28. The exhibition brings together works by international artists and centers on the theme of human understanding of the world and nature. The exhibition’s curator, Vera Mlechevska, has invited artists who uncover parallel visual structures in nature and the human body, while reflecting on humanity’s enduring journey toward knowledge and the search for harmony within oneself and with the surrounding world. The exhibition activates the historic spaces of Old Plovdiv, transforming them into a stage for contemporary artistic dialogue. https://fb.me/e/6DLvTr3EE
¬ Pavel Koychev / Communication / solo show / Plovdiv Art Gallery, Hall 2019, 32 “Gladstone” Str. / March 6 - April 5. This exhibition presents the just completed 13 gigantic plastic works – three-meter human figure compositions with archetypal significance. White stylized women and men, figures sitting at a table, characters in a boat, a family with children will be located in the white silence of the spacious hall in silent interaction with each other and with the audience. https://fb.me/e/8GZ7UZ8p0
¬ Chantal Scarlet / The inner workings of the human experience / curated by Stanimir Stoyanov / Galeriata - independent art space, 73 “Rayko Daskalov” Str. / March 6 - April 6. "How does a body appear when it ceases to belong to itself? When its functions disintegrate, shift, escape their assigned places? A body at war with its own organs (schizo body). A body besieged from within (paranoid body). A body without a center, without hierarchy, without a stable anatomy. A body that breathes with its heart, sees through its wounds, speaks through its surface. In her first solo exhibition, Chantal Scarlet dismantles the figure of the body in order to liberate experience from its boundaries." - Stanimir Stoyanov https://tinyurl.com/5h7uufjn
VARNA
¬ Human and Divine in the Art of the 17th and 18th centuries / museum exhibition / Varna City Art Gallery, 1 Lyuben Karavelov St. / February 26 - March 22. This large-scale project presents for the first time in a joint exhibition two significant collections, which show the portraits, landscapes, genre and biblical scenes and allegories from the period. The 17th and 18th centuries were an era of profound political, religious and cultural transformations, a time of formation of the new map of Europe and the beginnings of scientific thinking. It is in this dynamic context that art teaches, convinces, educates and builds images of power, faith and social order. In the dialogue between the human image and the divine meaning, the visual language of art from this period is built. A special emphasis in the exhibition are the portraits of delegates to the Westphalian Peace Conference (1648), rare testimonies to the birth of modern diplomacy and the political image. https://tinyurl.com/yc5yuatb
KAZANLAK
¬ Iskra Blagoeva. Valentina Sciarra / 77 ½ / joint show / Art Gallery Kazanlak, 9 Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii Str. / November 15 - March 29. The project 77 ½ began as a study of women’s rites & rituals in Bulgaria, affirming the dignity and power of the female world and energy beyond the conservatism of patriarchal society through a series of photographs, sound and video works, and performance documentation. 77 ½ are the herbs that must be gathered for winter, with the last half remaining nameless – a cure for a mysterious, unknown illness. For the artists, this illness is the sadness born from the anxiety and stress of living in today’s world. Whether there is a cure for sadness becomes a question whose answer Iskra Blagoeva and Valentina Sciarra seek in the bodily and spiritual restoration of broken ties with nature and community. https://tinyurl.com/yr488num
¬ Resurfacing / group exhibition / curated by Maria Vassileva / Art Gallery - Kazanlak, 9 Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii Str. and other locations / October 18 - March 29. Resurfacing is the third edition of the Art Everywhere project by Art Gallery Kazanlak. In an era marked by upheaval, Resurfacing becomes an urgent conversation about what we must leave behind us in order to move ahead. The exhibition reflects the conflicts, pain and injustices of our present. https://www.artgallerykazanlak.com/en/exhibitions/resurfacing/
¬ The End of a Year. Munich 1923 / archive exhibition / curated by Anton Staykov and Svoboda Tsekova / Art Gallery - Kazanlak, Dechko Uzunov House Museum, 24 Knyaz Mirski Str. / October 14 - May 14. Exhibition curators immerse themselves in the challenge of creating an installation that inhabits the borderland between an intimate exhibition and a library reading room. The narrative is concentrated in one of the rooms of the Dechko Uzunov House Museum; not just in a room, in fact, but in and around a single chest of drawers. That’s where the exhibition begins: with the rescued, unknown, and previously unstudied drawing by Rayko Alexiev from 1923. Through text and images—photographs, archival documents, reproductions of paintings—visitors are enveloped in the atmosphere and context of that “crazy” year, when disaster for some became an opportunity for others. https://tinyurl.com/ycyy2eww
Monthly edition by Open Art Foundation
¬ news selection : Desislava Mileva
¬ logo : Nedko Solakov
¬ cover : artnewscafe bulletin’s covers over the years