HISTORY IN BETWEEN
︎︎︎ 18-20.11.2021
ONLINE CONFERENCE
PANEL 1: CURATORIAL PRACTICES & HISTORICAL NARRATIVES
18th of November,
18:00 - 19:30 (CET)
Panellists: Vessela Nozharova, Bonita Bennett, Petrică Mogoș & Laura Naum
Vessela Nozharova with her expertise on contemporary Bulgarian art will discuss her methods of working with artists, spaces and concepts in regards to the memory, history and trauma of the communist regime.
18th of November,
18:00 - 19:30 (CET)
Panellists: Vessela Nozharova, Bonita Bennett, Petrică Mogoș & Laura Naum
The online panel discussion will reflect on methodologies used by curators when dealing with complex, unresolved and difficult histories within both the local and national contemporary art scene.
Vessela Nozharova with her expertise on contemporary Bulgarian art will discuss her methods of working with artists, spaces and concepts in regards to the memory, history and trauma of the communist regime.
Bonita Bennett, the former director of the District Six Museum, will share her strategies in participatory working and curation, in regards to the commemoration of the residents who were forcefully displaced as of the Apartheid in Cape Town, South Africa - a system of legislations imposing racial discrimination and segregation.
Petrică Mogoș & Laura Naum, the editors of Kajet Journal, will discuss their encounters with past and present difficult histories, unresolved and hidden narratives of Eastern European countries, which they curate in physical and digital forms.
PANEL 2: BRIDGING THE PAST & PRESENT
19th of November,
18:00 - 19:30 (CET)
Panellists: Dragana Jurišić, Aida Šehović and Luchezar Boyadjiev
19th of November,
18:00 - 19:30 (CET)
Panellists: Dragana Jurišić, Aida Šehović and Luchezar Boyadjiev
This panel will focus on the artistic practices of the three artists, which revolve around notions of memory, identity and trauma within the context of Eastern European communism and history.
Dragana Jurišić will discuss her series and photobook “YU: The Lost Country” which explores spaces and aftermaths of exile, trauma, national identity, memory and the home in regards to former Yugoslavia.
Aida Šehović, the founder of the ŠTO TE NEMA, will speak of the inception of the project, the participation of communities, and the healing, therapeutic and memorial elements of it. ŠTO TE NEMA is a nomadic monument commemorating the individuals killed during the Srebrenica genocide.
Luchezar Boyadjiev will talk of his creative process and work which investigates utopias and dystopias of the contemporary world, alongside sites and interactions situated between the private and public, and the effects and complexities in the aftermath of the socialist structures.
PANEL 3: INTERVENTIONS IN THE ARCHIVE
20th of November,
18:00 - 19:30 (CET)
Panellists: Bayr(y)am Bayr(y)amali, Beata Bartecka & Łukasz Rusznica and Anton Roland Laub
20th of November,
18:00 - 19:30 (CET)
Panellists: Bayr(y)am Bayr(y)amali, Beata Bartecka & Łukasz Rusznica and Anton Roland Laub
The discussion in this panel will emphasise on the photographic archive as an ephemeral and fragmented site - such used for uncovering, reinventing, appropriating and challenging narratives. The four practitioners will share their discoveries and methods when working with an archive, and will pose questions in regards to the role of the camera as a tool for representing historical events.
Bayr(y)am Bayr(y)amali will discuss his visual and oral history studies of the so-called “Revival Process” - the mass assimilation and forced displacement of Bulgarian Turks, Pomaks and Romani people during the 1980s in communist Bulgaria.
Beata Bartecka & Łukasz Rusznica will share the processes and methods they have established whilst working on their book How to Look Natural in Photos with archival materials from the Polish Institute of National Remembrance.
Anton Roland Laub will present his artistic practice with a focus on his latest photobook LAST CHRISTMAS (of Ceaușescu) – where he employs his own photographs and archival ones, and departs on a journey backwards to the Romanian Revolution.
About the participants:
Vessela Nozharova is an art historian, critic and curator based in Sofia. She graduated in Art History from the National Art Academy in Sofia. Working predominantly with contemporary art, her activities focus on curating, art criticism for a number of Bulgarian publications, and lecturing on the history of art and its current agenda. She has completed more than 40 curatorial projects in Bulgaria, Austria, Belgium, Italy and Turkey. In 2007 she curated the Bulgarian national presentation at the 52nd Venice Biennial for contemporary art. Since 2015 she is the curator of Credo Bonum Gallery in Sofia. In 2008 Vessela Nozharova co-founded the curatorial collective Art – Affairs and Documents Foundation. Vessela Nozharova is author of Introduction to Bulgarian Contemporary Art (1982– 2015), the first comprehensive history of Bulgarian art from the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.
Bonita Bennett has been involved at the District Six Museum since 2008 and was its director from July 2008 to January 2020. She has a background in education and as a human rights activist and has recently completed my PhD in Museum and Heritage Studies. The District Six Museum has been a wonderful platform from which to confront issues of displacement and restitution and to also raise awareness about the indivisibility of human rights. Bonita continues to support its work as a research associate as she is deeply interested in issues relating to memory, human rights and heritage.
Petre Mogoș and Laura Naum are the editors of Kajet, a journal that seeks to reconfigure the Eastern European thought and imagination. Their research navigates the intersection between neoliberal politics and popular culture, cultural memory and visual culture, and (post-)socialist art worlds in the context of marginal and uncertain settings. They run a bookshop in the city centre of Bucharest, called Dispozitiv Books, which also functions as a publishing programme.
Born in the former Yugoslavia and now living and working in Dublin, Dragana Jurišić received her PhD from the European Centre for Photographic Research in 2013. She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of South Wales and Assistant Professor at Dublin City University. Working primarily with image, text and video, she has shown her work extensively and won many awards, including the Golden Fleece Special Recognition Award, IMMA 1000 Residency Award and numerous Bursaries and Project Awards. Her work is in a number of important collections including the National Gallery of Ireland, Arts Council Collection and Irish State Art Collection. Her first book, YU: The Lost Country received accolades worldwide. Her last book Museum, collaboration with Paula Meehan, came out in July 2019. Newest publication, The Merits of the Tracer Fire, a collaboration with Sarah Cave came out in December 2020.
Aida Šehović was born in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and like thousands of fellow Bosnian Muslims, fled her country due to threat of systematic violence and persecution in 1992. She lived as a refugee in Turkey and Germany before immigrating to United States in 1997. Šehović earned her BA from the University of Vermont in 2002 and her MFA from Hunter College in 2010. She received the ArtsLink Award in 2006, the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship in 2007, the Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park in 2013, and the Fellowship for Utopian Practice from Culture Push in 2017. She was an artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Vermont Studio Center, the Grand Central Art Center, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has been exhibited at the Canadian Museum for Human rights, KRAK Center for Contemporary Culture, Laumeier Sculpture Park, Queens Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Artivism: Atrocity Prevention Pavilion during the 58th Venice Biennale. Šehović is the founder of ŠTO TE NEMA – a participatory public monument to Srebrenica Genocide that was presented in 15 different cities from 2006 to 2020. She lives and works between New York City and Sarajevo.
Luchezar Boyadjiev is one of the most famous contemporary artists from Bulgaria. His work is about personal interpretation of social processes, about the interaction between private and public, about urban visuality and the world of today split between utopia and dystopia. His media is installation, photography, drawing, objects, text, video, and performative lectures. Selected exhibitions are: the solo shows “Luchezar Boyadjiev: Re-building the World of Images. 1991-2019”, MOMus Contemporary, Thessaloniki (2020); “Dystopian Cozy”, Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv (2018); “Luchezar Boyadjiev. Sic transit media mundi /The present is too short and rather tight/”, Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia (retro) (2018); and the group shows in: 2019 “The Influencing Machine”, Nikodim Gallery, Bucharest; 2016-17 “Economize”, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, as well as “Symptoms of Society”, Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou) and Zhejiang Art Museum (Zhejiang Sheng), China; in 2016 “Cold Wind from the Balkans”, PERA Museum, Istanbul; “Low-budget Utopias”, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; in 2015 “The Grammar of Freedom”, GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, and “Art for Change 1985-2015”, City Art Gallery, Sofia; in 2014 “Disconsent”, CCA “Ancient Bath”, Plovdiv; in 2013 “Economics in Art”, MOCAK, Cracow; in 2012 “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times”, 1st Biennial, Kiev, and “The Eye Never Sees itself”, 2nd Biennial, Yekaterinburg; and in 2011 “The Global Contemporary”, ZKM, Karlsruhe. The artist is a Founding Member of ICA-Sofia.
Bayr(y)am Mustafa Bayr(y)amali is a London based Bulgarian Turkish visual researcher, journalist, facilitator and art activist born in 1997. Through his work, he explores the themes of memory, reconciliation and participation through photography and in gallery context. As a child of Bulgarian Turks who experienced ethnic cleansing during the communist regime in Bulgaria, his practice deals with issues of new world borders, il/legal identities and intergenerational trauma. In his recent practice challenges Bayr(y)am challenges the imperial condition of Western art galleries and museums through advocacy and boycott.
Łukasz Rusznica (1980) photographer and curator, in artistic practice focused mainly on the photo book. He runs the MpM14 gallery in Wrocław. Beata Bartecka (1980) - curator focused primarily on photography, graphic design, and typography; editor, post producer and wanna-be-scriptwriter.
Anton Roland Laub, born and brought up in Bucharest, studied at the Weißensee Art Academy and the Neue Schule für Fotografie, Berlin. In his artistic practice, Laub engages with subversive approaches in decoding reality constructions, proxy strategies and phantoms of power. His recent photo books LAST CHRISTMAS (of Ceaușescu) and Mobile Churches, both published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, address Romania’s contemporary history as well as the legacy of Ceaușescu’s dictatorship. He is a finalist of the New Discovery Award, International Photo Festival Les Rencontres d’Arles. Selected exhibitions include Photo Saint-Germain, Paris; FORMAT Photography Biennale, Derby; EMOP, Athens and Berlin; atelier35, Bucharest; Kaunas Photography Gallery, Kaunas. His work is represented in the book and media art collection of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Berlin Wall Memorial; the City Museum Bucharest; in the archive of Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles.
Vessela Nozharova is an art historian, critic and curator based in Sofia. She graduated in Art History from the National Art Academy in Sofia. Working predominantly with contemporary art, her activities focus on curating, art criticism for a number of Bulgarian publications, and lecturing on the history of art and its current agenda. She has completed more than 40 curatorial projects in Bulgaria, Austria, Belgium, Italy and Turkey. In 2007 she curated the Bulgarian national presentation at the 52nd Venice Biennial for contemporary art. Since 2015 she is the curator of Credo Bonum Gallery in Sofia. In 2008 Vessela Nozharova co-founded the curatorial collective Art – Affairs and Documents Foundation. Vessela Nozharova is author of Introduction to Bulgarian Contemporary Art (1982– 2015), the first comprehensive history of Bulgarian art from the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.
Bonita Bennett has been involved at the District Six Museum since 2008 and was its director from July 2008 to January 2020. She has a background in education and as a human rights activist and has recently completed my PhD in Museum and Heritage Studies. The District Six Museum has been a wonderful platform from which to confront issues of displacement and restitution and to also raise awareness about the indivisibility of human rights. Bonita continues to support its work as a research associate as she is deeply interested in issues relating to memory, human rights and heritage.
Petre Mogoș and Laura Naum are the editors of Kajet, a journal that seeks to reconfigure the Eastern European thought and imagination. Their research navigates the intersection between neoliberal politics and popular culture, cultural memory and visual culture, and (post-)socialist art worlds in the context of marginal and uncertain settings. They run a bookshop in the city centre of Bucharest, called Dispozitiv Books, which also functions as a publishing programme.
Born in the former Yugoslavia and now living and working in Dublin, Dragana Jurišić received her PhD from the European Centre for Photographic Research in 2013. She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of South Wales and Assistant Professor at Dublin City University. Working primarily with image, text and video, she has shown her work extensively and won many awards, including the Golden Fleece Special Recognition Award, IMMA 1000 Residency Award and numerous Bursaries and Project Awards. Her work is in a number of important collections including the National Gallery of Ireland, Arts Council Collection and Irish State Art Collection. Her first book, YU: The Lost Country received accolades worldwide. Her last book Museum, collaboration with Paula Meehan, came out in July 2019. Newest publication, The Merits of the Tracer Fire, a collaboration with Sarah Cave came out in December 2020.
Aida Šehović was born in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and like thousands of fellow Bosnian Muslims, fled her country due to threat of systematic violence and persecution in 1992. She lived as a refugee in Turkey and Germany before immigrating to United States in 1997. Šehović earned her BA from the University of Vermont in 2002 and her MFA from Hunter College in 2010. She received the ArtsLink Award in 2006, the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship in 2007, the Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park in 2013, and the Fellowship for Utopian Practice from Culture Push in 2017. She was an artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Vermont Studio Center, the Grand Central Art Center, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has been exhibited at the Canadian Museum for Human rights, KRAK Center for Contemporary Culture, Laumeier Sculpture Park, Queens Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Artivism: Atrocity Prevention Pavilion during the 58th Venice Biennale. Šehović is the founder of ŠTO TE NEMA – a participatory public monument to Srebrenica Genocide that was presented in 15 different cities from 2006 to 2020. She lives and works between New York City and Sarajevo.
Luchezar Boyadjiev is one of the most famous contemporary artists from Bulgaria. His work is about personal interpretation of social processes, about the interaction between private and public, about urban visuality and the world of today split between utopia and dystopia. His media is installation, photography, drawing, objects, text, video, and performative lectures. Selected exhibitions are: the solo shows “Luchezar Boyadjiev: Re-building the World of Images. 1991-2019”, MOMus Contemporary, Thessaloniki (2020); “Dystopian Cozy”, Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv (2018); “Luchezar Boyadjiev. Sic transit media mundi /The present is too short and rather tight/”, Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia (retro) (2018); and the group shows in: 2019 “The Influencing Machine”, Nikodim Gallery, Bucharest; 2016-17 “Economize”, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, as well as “Symptoms of Society”, Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou) and Zhejiang Art Museum (Zhejiang Sheng), China; in 2016 “Cold Wind from the Balkans”, PERA Museum, Istanbul; “Low-budget Utopias”, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; in 2015 “The Grammar of Freedom”, GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, and “Art for Change 1985-2015”, City Art Gallery, Sofia; in 2014 “Disconsent”, CCA “Ancient Bath”, Plovdiv; in 2013 “Economics in Art”, MOCAK, Cracow; in 2012 “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times”, 1st Biennial, Kiev, and “The Eye Never Sees itself”, 2nd Biennial, Yekaterinburg; and in 2011 “The Global Contemporary”, ZKM, Karlsruhe. The artist is a Founding Member of ICA-Sofia.
Bayr(y)am Mustafa Bayr(y)amali is a London based Bulgarian Turkish visual researcher, journalist, facilitator and art activist born in 1997. Through his work, he explores the themes of memory, reconciliation and participation through photography and in gallery context. As a child of Bulgarian Turks who experienced ethnic cleansing during the communist regime in Bulgaria, his practice deals with issues of new world borders, il/legal identities and intergenerational trauma. In his recent practice challenges Bayr(y)am challenges the imperial condition of Western art galleries and museums through advocacy and boycott.
Łukasz Rusznica (1980) photographer and curator, in artistic practice focused mainly on the photo book. He runs the MpM14 gallery in Wrocław. Beata Bartecka (1980) - curator focused primarily on photography, graphic design, and typography; editor, post producer and wanna-be-scriptwriter.
Anton Roland Laub, born and brought up in Bucharest, studied at the Weißensee Art Academy and the Neue Schule für Fotografie, Berlin. In his artistic practice, Laub engages with subversive approaches in decoding reality constructions, proxy strategies and phantoms of power. His recent photo books LAST CHRISTMAS (of Ceaușescu) and Mobile Churches, both published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, address Romania’s contemporary history as well as the legacy of Ceaușescu’s dictatorship. He is a finalist of the New Discovery Award, International Photo Festival Les Rencontres d’Arles. Selected exhibitions include Photo Saint-Germain, Paris; FORMAT Photography Biennale, Derby; EMOP, Athens and Berlin; atelier35, Bucharest; Kaunas Photography Gallery, Kaunas. His work is represented in the book and media art collection of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Berlin Wall Memorial; the City Museum Bucharest; in the archive of Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles.
© History in Between, 2021This project is part of the Cultural Calendar of Sofia, Ministry of Culture and Sofia History Museum.
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„История помежду“ ("Проект за музейни намеси в РИМ, София") е съвместен проект между Фондация „Изкуство – Дела и Документи“ и Регионален исторически музей, София, подкрепен Календар на културните събития на Столична Община.
History in Between (Project for interventions in the Museum, Sofia) is a collaboration between the Art Foundation - Affairs and Documents, and the Regional History Museum of Sofia. It is supported by the Calendar of Cultural Events of Sofia City.
