27th edition of Contemporary Art Week in Plovdiv
The weight of being Exhibition

The week of contemporary art will be opened on September 3 at 8:00 p.m. at Roman Stadium-Plovdiv and will continue until September 11 in various locations in the center of Plovdiv.

On September 3, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., in the lobby of the Central Post Office, Plovdiv, an international conference will be held on the topic "Artistic interventions in the urban environment - how does the artist (inter)act with the place and the people?" featuring Britta Peters, Artistic Director of Urbane Künste Ruhr, Bochum, Germany, curator of the exhibition and some of the artists in the project.

Week of Contemporary Art is the first annual international project for contemporary art in Bulgaria, which began in 1995. The organizer is "Art Today" association, based in Plovdiv, which is one of the leading organizations for contemporary art in the country. Association "Art Today" was established in 1997 and aims to present alternative and experimental forms of contemporary art; to work for their study and documentation; to build an information database representing contemporary authors.

The most significant project of the Association "Art Today" is the Week of Contemporary Art 2022, which after 28 years continues to be a sustainable and attractive initiative, both for the public and the art scene.
For each edition, a leading Bulgarian or foreign curator is invited, who chooses a current topic. Many of the works presented were created specifically forWeek of Contemporary Art. Important names from the international scene such as Hito Steyerl, Bill Viola, Benedict Partenheimer, Ute Richter, Julian Rosefeld, Scenocosme, Hans Schabus and many others have participated in the exhibitions. All of them are artists who have participated in the world's most famous contemporary art forums.

Curator of this year's edition of the Week of Contemporary Art is Galina Dimitrova-Dimova - curator and organizer of cultural projects. The theme of the exhibition is "The Weight of Being", which was inspired by Milan Kundera's novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". At the center of the reflections that led to the concept of the exhibition are the antagonisms with which human existence is connected: heaviness and lightness, freedom and dependence, responsibility and lack of will. "Of these, the opposition of weight - lightness is the most mysterious and the most significant".

The focus of the study is the thirst to be freed - from thoughts, actions, responsibilities and how this leads to our seemingly easy abdication of responsibility, which in turn brings the feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness. This can also be seen as a form of modern (post-capitalist) slavery, where people sell their most valuable possessions - their time, thoughts and ideas - to capitalize on a comfortable existence. Here, time is seen as a value, as a unit of measure or a barter coin that is used to fulfill human desires.

But as Kundera argues, ease never brings the resistance a man needs to fight his battles, it brings no pleasure, no particular meaning. Therefore, no matter how much this overwhelming burden scares us, it can only make us live with dignity. And beauty is the last thing that supports us on this difficult path - the beauty of exploring, of self-examination.

The conceptual framework of the Contemporary Art Week in Plovdiv 2022 is in the direction of regaining the weight of existence and the poetics of the image, which lightens us and lifts us off the ground, because "Creativity for people is like flying for birds" (Chekhov).

The format of the exhibition is art in public space and includes temporary artistic interventions in the urban environment in the form of installations, performances and guerilla actions related to the theme.

The artists participating in the exhibition are: Lachezar Boyadzhiev (Bulgaria), Emil Mirazchiev (Bulgaria), Venelin Shurelov (Bulgaria), Veronika Tsekova (Bulgaria/Austria), Desislava Terzieva (Bulgaria/USA), Sevdalina Kochevska (Bulgaria), Boryana Ventsislavova (Bulgaria/Austria), Ariel Reichman (Israel/Germany), Selma Selman (Bosnia and Herzegovina/Netherlands) and Elena Bellantoni (Italy/Germany). The period of the exhibition is September 2-11, 2022, and the artworks will be located in various locations in the center of Plovdiv. As part of the opening ceremony, the performance "MirroMorphosis" by Irina Stoyanova and Hristo Zhelev will take place.

"Call the city, call the people" - this is the motto of the conference, which will be held on September 3, within the 28th Week of Contemporary Art. The focus of the conference is on artistic interventions in urban environments that are specific to the space and seek engagement or interaction with the public. At the center of the presentations and discussions by the invited curators and artists will be the term "new genre of public art", proposed by the American curator Susan Lacey. She defines these artistic practices as "activist, dealing with social and political issues, often created outside the institutional structure, thus enabling the artist to connect directly with the public". Although social contribution is central to the works, the message is conveyed metaphorically and poetically, and the aesthetic qualities of the works are not to be underestimated. This is an important part of understanding the importance of placing art in public space.

For more information, follow the organizer's Facebook page --> HERE. 

Week of Contemporary Art 2022 is possible with the support of the Municipality of Plovdiv, the National Fund for Culture and Goethe-Institut Bulgarien.