EXHIBITION DATES 20.02.2024-20.03.2024
CULTURAMA presents "after nature / natural continuation"
The Vaska Emanuilova Gallery will host an exhibition by the talented young artist Biliana Furnadzhieva
Solo exhibition by the talented visual artist Biliana Furnadzhieva „after nature / natural continuation“ will be on display from February 20 to March 20 at the Vaska Emanuilova Gallery as part of the program and "Meeting Place". The exhibition is part of the CULTURAMA festival, a platform for stage performances based on the National Scholarship project "With Effort Towards the Stars." The official opening will take place on February 20 at 6 p.m. at the gallery on 15 Yanko Sakazov Blvd. in Sofia.
Biliana Furnadzhieva is a scholarship recipient of the National Scholarship "With Effort Towards the Stars." for 2023–2024, supported by the Sofia Municipality in the field of visual arts. The young artist (born in 1992, Sofia) has been living and working in Paris since 2011, graduating from the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (2017) and Ensaama Olivier de Serres (2013) in Paris.
Bilyana develops her practice as a visual artist and, at the same time, is the artistic director of Crystal Sound Project, a musical ensemble focused on interdisciplinary collaborations.
Her work has been presented at SuperMarket ArtFair, Stockholm, Yun-Chia-Chia-Ying Visual Art Link, Taiwan, Hangar 9, Geneva, Or blanc, Château de Vincennes, Paris. For two consecutive years, Biljana has been supported by Chaire Innovation et savoir-faire de la Fondation Bettencourt Schueller and has been on a long-term residency at Cité internationale des arts.
After regular creative stays, she developed a relationship with the BKN Björkö Konstnod organization in the Stockholm archipelago. Biljana has been involved in the development of the Prix Bob Calle du livre d'artiste art book award since its inception in 2017.
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Sprouting
Bertrand Schaeffer
For the people of the Renaissance, light had a separate essence. It was a single, indivisible whole. A reality that was both tangible and spiritual, both visible and immeasurable.
In his treatise on light, Quid sit lumen, which greatly influenced the artists of the Quattrocento, Marsilio Ficino wrote this extraordinary sentence: "Although visible light shines in bodies, it is created and preserved thanks to the invisible light of the spirit, which, due to its intensity, overflows and becomes visible." The invisible is not beyond the visible, but is the visible in its infancy. This statement overturns centuries of theology and religious painting. The golden background of the primitive masters and icon painters was beyond, it was the supernatural, all the light of the unlimited space of the divine, the world of imperishable transcendence, which rose against the visible and the accidental.
They already knew that this flat surface of pure light did not neglect anything from the depths of nature, that everything was there, every leaf, every blade of grass, every cloud, the entire landscape, but in a state of saturation and excess, in a state of fusion that only dazzles.
When Biljana showed me what she calls her drawings and told me how she had traversed the landscapes to collect plants from the heart of the forest and transparent rocks on the shore, how she had allowed herself to be absorbed by the lights of the Baltic Sea for a long time—she recreated them with golden varak, in the form of a star or a line, as if gaps, as if to rewrite everything and illuminate it from within, gathering a panorama in several elements, each golden leaf in dialogue with its equivalent taken from nature—the long history of the golden background came back to me.
The gold she uses in her drawings dazzles me, it is visible at the melting point. This is the sprouting world, multiplying everywhere in her work, migrating in every form: drawing, collage, painting, sculpture, photogram, music. These are all landscapes. All past, but also future. All that I will see until the end, and all the scenes that will play out there. Here or on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and even further away, where I will go one day. In a flash of a moment, I see everything. Gold is a mirror the size of nature, larger than we will ever be. Our own image does not appear on the golden background, I notice. We are not reflected in it; its essence is too hot, it burns us. Gold is like a flame that cracks and engulfs.
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After nature, traces of things
Kalina Svezhin
How late is it if nature has already passed? If the leaves have fallen and the stones have turned into golden sand. Fragments from distant journeys, memories of a broken life. Have we met, have we existed? Like a note left on the door – I was here, but it wasn't here.
Is the gesture of looking too late if the eye does not see but creates – a new nature in which to reign, as God reigned in the old one – which he created, but we destroyed with our own hands.
How early is the hour if nature is already wounded. If it leaves traces, but disappears without a trace. In the footsteps of the motionless trees, this is the path that awaits you. The map is in the fallen leaves. Towards new colors and old truths. Towards the final destination of our escape.
Is the view of things premature, in the nature of which we lost ourselves. Without understanding who we are, without discovering our lies - to scream ourselves into madness and then fall silent in the ashes of time.
I am absent in my thoughts, present in the sand. You are born in the raindrops, you leave me with the clouds. I gather the sand in my thoughts and run into the clock of the present. I uproot the words and sow them in the future.
I am the tree that left. You are in the leaves and the watercolors. In the stones I find the address of our impossible meeting.
I am the man under the sky. Who thought that the sky was far away. That the earth had nothing to do with it, nor with his outer garment.
I am the skin of the snake that shed in spring. And threw it at the edge of the abyss where apples did not grow.
I am that abyss and, conversely, the grass that bloomed.
I am you when you are not there. You are me because I am there. I walk towards you and you look for me—in the traces you leave behind.
Because everything that leaves remains.
A trace in our souls.
The event is organized by the Cultural Perspectives Foundation in partnership with the Sofia City Art Gallery and with the support of the Culture Program of the Sofia Municipality.