The National Gallery
SOFIA ARSENAL – MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
presents
Mariana Vassileva
Flying and Other Daily Necessities
3 July–24 August 2025
Curator: Nadezhda Dzhakova, PhD
Opening on Thursday, 3 July 2025, at 6 p.m.
SAMCA, 2, Cherni Vrah Blvd., Sofia
Bulgarian-born Mariana Vassileva has lived and worked in Germany for many years and has taken part in only a few exhibitions in her home country. Now the public have the opportunity to see her latest works, specially created for the museum space, as well as others not previously shown in Bulgaria, but included in museums and collections around the world.
Her solo exhibition includes sculptures, photographs, text, video art, and installations. Among this variety of media, the artist has sought the most accurate conceptual approach to realising her ideas. To the above, she has added light, which she transforms into an object.
In her works, she achieves a sense of aesthetic balance, poetry and beauty, a semantic echo of thinking and feeling resonating in her critical view of reality.
Vassileva’s exhibition began as an autobiographical account where childhood memories, her relationship with her mother and homeland all meet, but inevitably progressed to the political and social realities in which we live. ‘I am’ is now ‘we are’. Small personal slogans have become manifestos for freedom and human welfare.
What is it like, to live in a world devoid of empathy? For the artist, the most important is to remain yourself and to preserve your personal freedom, as she has emphasised through her work Be Yourself, which welcomes the viewer at the entrance to the museum. Flight is a daily necessity and a personal action that must be protected and defended.
‘I try to express the contradiction within myself… within us: the hands that offer us love and strength, and those that want to harm us. They are mostly within ourselves or in our encirclement. But, ultimately, they are all part of a larger process: that of human growth, constant change, and the balance between different forces,’ she stated.
For further information:
Nadezhda Dzhakova, Head of SAMCA
+359 (0) 879 834 030