Boryana Rossa

Biography 

Boryana Rossa is an interdisciplinary artist and curator born in Sofia, 1972. She holds PhD and MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer University, Troy, NY and MFA in Mural painting from the National Academy of Arts, Sofia. Rossa is currently and Assistant professor in Transmedia at the Syracuse University, NY.  

Hert works are shown at venues such as Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art (MUMOK) Vienna; Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw;  1st Balkan Biennale, Thessaloniki; Kunstwerke and Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; The 1st and 2nd Moscow Biennial For Contemporary Art;  Sofia City Art Gallery;  Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia; Exit Art, NY, Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMCA), Sofia, 2018 Beijing Media Art Biennial, China; University of the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland; Coreana Museum, Seoul etc.  

In 2004 together with the Russian artist and film maker Oleg Mavromatti, Rossa establishes UTRAFUTURO–an international group of artists engaged with issues of technology, science and their social implications. Works by ULTRAFUTURO have been included in the Biennial for Electronic Art, Perth (BEAP) and shown at FACT, Liverpool; SAT, Montreal.    

Since 2012 Rossa has been a director of Sofia Queer Forum, together with the philosopher and activist Stanimir Panayotov.  

In 2014 she was awarded the prestigious 2014 NYFA Fellowship Award for Digital/Electronic Arts  together with Oleg Mavromatti. Her 2014 bio-art project “The Mirror or Faith”, she completed at Hangar, Barcelona was part of the Grid Spinoza program, funded by the European Commission.  

Rossa’s art has been written about in milestone books about art such as Global Feminisms, 2007; Gender Check, 2010; re.act.feminism, 2014; ZenD’Art 2010; Performance Art in Eastern Europe since 1960, Manchester University Press, 2018 and magazines such as Kunstforum International, Frieze etc.

About

Three words that define my practice are technology, body and gender.      

My work gravitates around the question of how our social, cultural and political identities are shaped by the use of technology and the application of scientific knowledge. More specifically I am interested in how, influenced by the new technological and scientific advances, we rediscover our bodies and often try to shape them or represent them accordingly. By these representations of “the body(ies)” we produce social and political constructs and develop cultures and economies. They, on their side, produce conflicts, but also solidarities that are subjects of my work.      

This interest in technology and the body is reflected in the cross-sections and interactions of the following topics and related questions:    

- Gender and its intersection with nationality, political histories, race, ethnicity, diseases, abilities and class;
- Transnational identities. How are they forming and transforming local communities and socio-economic relations within the context of neoliberal capitalism?;
- The transformation of our notions of life and death due to the implementation of biotechnological advances in everyday life. 
- Artificial life and artificial intelligence. On the basis of which philosophical ideas do we create these artificial phenomena?  

Boryana Rossa  

Boryana Rossa belongs to the breed of thoughtful contemporary artists whose works represent the synthesis of diverse modes of expression – from academic and curatorial, to socially-conscious and political as well as the directly artistic. Since the end of the 1990s, her central concerns have been corporeality as examined through the prism of cultural codes and various historical circumstances, and political constructions of gender. While the artist is acutely aware of the mechanisms of power and gender hierarchies, her analysis of the framework of social violence is not direct, but performed by means of art, creating a silence between the work and the viewer. These silent spaces, where the pause of meaning lays bare the audience’s reaction, become, in her work, markers of social change, delineating the difference between contemporary social mechanisms, and markers of how art is experienced in general.  

Nadia Plungian 

Gallery

Boryana Rossa

Celebrating the Next Twinkling, 1999.

Video

Details

Boryana Rossa, together with Oleg Mavromatti (ULTRAFUTURO)

Vitruvian Body, 2009.

Performance

Details

  • Photographer: Jan Stradtmann
  • Material: photography
  • Width: 150.00 cm    Height: 120.00 cm    Depth: cm   
  • Sizes: Jan Stradtmann
  • Property of: Sofia Arsenal - Museum of Contemporary Art
  • Description: Vitruvian Body is a critical embodiment of the “ideal proportions” of the human body, defined as such by the Roman architect Vitruvius in his drawing "Vitruvian Man".
    I put my hands and legs in the holes of a metal construction, especially built for the performance. This construction mimics Vitruvius’ geometric drawing, which consists of a circle and a square, within which a body of a white man represents correlations between of the ideal human proportions, according to the architect, with geometry. These correlations are also known as the “cannon of proportions” or the “proportions of man” and were used in architecture.
    Oleg Mavromatti stitches up my wrists and my legs with a surgical thread to the metal construction. I speak through the whole performance and I tell stories about this action and what led to it.

    Before the beginning, I invite people from the audience to make photographs of the action with digital devices they have in hand-telephones, photo and video cameras. They are allowed to be as close to me as they want and use flashes.
    This collaborative work with the audience is applied to almost all of my recent performances. It reflects the era of digital and Internet technologies, which allowed people to create their own news and mythologies.
  • Copyright: Boryana Rossa
  • References: https://frieze.com/article/open-stage
    https://bit.ly/2E2gpz9
    https://bit.ly/2MWyhyi

Boryana Rossa

Amazon armor, 2013.

Photography

Details

  • Photographer: Boryana Rossa
  • Material: Series of 20 photographs, print on canvas
  • Width: 1000.00 mm    Height: 800.00 mm    Depth: 30.00 mm   
  • Sizes: Hundred to eighty centimeters
  • Property of: Boryana Rossa
  • Description: This photo performance is part of an entire cycle of work, presented under the title “Amazon Armor,” such as the photo series, live performances, drawings and sculptural objects “Pervert Veggies,” “Deconstruction of VALIE EXPORT’S ‘Touch and Tap Cinema,’” “Madonna of the External Silicone Breast.” All of them are representing my new body, which lacks breast after double mastectomy due to cancer. I use the newly opened vacant space on my chest to play with objects and vegetables, that replace my breast. Inspired by people on Internet, who put carrots on the place of their penises, or watermelons on the place of their breast, I do believe that humor is the best remedy for trauma. Therefore I have not only played myself with these objects, but invited audiences and fellow artists to do so. People learn more actively and empathize with others, though shared acts, as opposed to processing written or even pictorial information.

    Besides dealing with trauma, I want to queer the standardized body image of health and beauty and offer deviation from the standard, through references to historical and current bodies that have the right to exist and be appreciated. In the specific “Amazon Armor” photo series I made in Woodstock the queering moved from Internet memes with veggies into realms referencing other contexts, from classical Greek aesthetics and the myth of the Amazons--women warriors who cut their breast off to better steady their bows--to depictions of St. Sebastian, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. These series were made during a residency at Byrdcliffe Artists Colony in Woodstock, NY in close collaboration with artist Adam Zaretzky.
  • Copyright: Boryana Rossa
  • References: http://novilevi.org/media/Rossa-Amazon_Armor-Online_Edition.pdf

Boryana Rossa in collaboration with Selma Selman

Come to America, Get Rich!, 2017.

Photography

Details

  • Photographer: Oleg Mavromatti
  • Material: Series of five photographs, 100/70 cm, digital photo print on paper
  • Width: 1000.00 mm    Height: 700.00 mm    Depth: mm   
  • Property of: Boryana Rossa
  • Description: Directly inspired by photos made by immigrants, where they make pictures of themselves next to cars and houses that might not be theirs, this series is reflecting the stereotypes that the immigrant live is richer and easier. Especially the live in "Dreamland America."
  • Copyright: Boryana Rossa
  • References: http://boryanarossa.com

Boryana Rossa and ULTRAFUTURO

The Last Valve, 2004.

Performance

Details

  • Photographer: Alla Georgieva
  • Material: Photo documentation of live performance
  • Width: 90.00 cm    Height: 100.00 cm    Depth: cm   
  • Property of: Boryana Rossa
  • Description: The Last Valve is a manifesto of a future free of gender hostility. Rossa sews her vulva shut with surgical thread, playing with the common Bulgarian sexist expression “stitched up cunt” defining women who prefer to choose when and with whom to have sex and do not submit to the desires of the men around. Rossa was inspired by existing transgender or no-gender/no-sex animal bodies and sexualities in the animal and human world, by sexually hybrid human and animal bodies, and by the emergence of artificial created robotic and biological bodies that are free of gender determinations. All these models propose escape from heteronormative binarism. These models also propose possible society, which has the potential to accept more flexible notions of sex and gender, to embrace diversity, and to create more fluid definitions of gender/sex appropriateness.
  • Copyright: Boryana Rossa
  • References: http://performingtheeast.com/boryana-rossa/
    https://bit.ly/2Dsvj01
    https://bit.ly/2I4nWBM
    https://bit.ly/2TG0M60
    http://www.vaginamuseum.at/LEIBundLEBEN/geburt-rossa-at
    https://bit.ly/2MZIFW3

Boryana Rossa

Snapchat Mama, 2017.

Drawing

Details

  • Photographer: Boryana Rossa
  • Material: Acrylic on paper
  • Width: 950.00 mm    Height: 1100.00 mm    Depth: mm   
  • Property of: Boryana Rossa
  • Description: This drawing is based on a Snapchat photo and is related to horrible experiences, both real and imaginary.
  • Copyright: Boryana Rossa

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