THE NATIONAL GALLERY
SOFIA ARSENAL – MUSEUM FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
presents
BORYANA ROSSA
AUGMENTED REALISM
Curator: Nadezhda Dzhakova
7 September – 22 October 2017
Opening: Thursday, 7 September, 18:00 – 20:00
SAMCA, 2, Cherni Vrah Blvd., Sofia
Boryana Rossa’s exhibition is an autobiographical tale recreated through painting, photography, objects, video, drawings, and documentation of her performances. The exhibition includes well-known projects: Vitruvian Body (2008); Amazon Armour (2013); Pervert Veggies (2013); and the latest series: Come to America and Become Rich! (2017), and Augmented Realism (2017), among others.
Using the autobiographical approach as a medium for self-presentation and self-expression, Boryana Rossa explores issues related to gender identity, sexuality, and social themes such as alienation, marginality, and emigration. By including her body, personal and family stories in the artistic process, she casts doubt on the notion of ‘personal’ – ‘conventional’– transforming autobiographism into an exemplar.
Why ‘augmented realism’? In order to reflect the complexity of the interaction between social life and technology, I chose ‘Augmented Realism’ as the title of the exhibition. I consider the idea of ‘an augmented reality’, which has a tremendous impact on our contemporary culture, to be impressive. The possibility to see the world through the lens of your phone, for example, and to interact with digitally generated places and beings (as in Pokémon Go, perhaps the most popular application of ‘augmented reality’) is also an expressive visual metaphor for all our interactions with technology and how they affect our lives.
This is the second exhibition of the ‘Autobiography’ project in the programme of the Museum of Documenting Modern Art. Not having any retrospective character, the aim of the project is to point out and emphasise names and artworks that have changed our art from the 1990s to the present day.
Boryana Rossa, born in Sofia in 1972, currently lives and works in Sofia and New York. She is an interdisciplinary artist and curator who works in the fields of electronic arts, film, video, performance and photography. In 2004, together with Russian artist and filmmaker Oleg Mavromatti, Rossa established ULTRAFUTURO, subsequently participating in numerous international exhibitions. Boryana Rossa recently defended her PhD on Post-Cold War Gender Performances. Cross-cultural Examination of Gender Representations Viewed Through Soviet, Russian and Bulgarian Film Re-enactments at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York. Currently, she is Assistant Professor in the Department of Transmedia at the Syracuse University, New York, teaching art video, film, and interdisciplinary art.
Rossa’s performances and other works have been shown at world-famous museums and forums, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (MUMOK), Vienna; the Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the 1st and 2nd Moscow Biennial for Contemporary Art; the 1st Balkan Biennale, Thessaloniki, and many more.
For further information:
Nadezhda Dzhakova – +359 879 834 030
Photographs:
Come to America and Become Rich!
jointly with Selma Selman
2017
A series of five photographs
Photographer: Oleg Mavromatti
Augmented Realism 2
2017
A series of three drawings
Ink and coloured pencil on paper