A FEW WAYS TO WIN THE WORLD

With the participation of:

Veneta Androva, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Martina Vacheva, Mariela Gemisheva, Alla Georgieva, Gery Georgieva, Ivo Dimchev, Orlin Dvorianov and the “Kukuvden" Group, Vladimir Ivanov, Pravdoliub Ivanov, Tsvetan Krastev, Ventseslav Kostov, Albena Mihailova - Benji, Ivan Mudov, Stefan Nikolaev, Adelina Popnedeleva, Rassim ®, Boryana Rossa and ULTRAFUTURO, Georgi Ruzhev, Veselin Sariev, Kalin Serapionov, Nedko Solakov, Sasho Stoitsov, Krasimir Terziev, Houben Tcherkelov, Stanka Tsonkova - Usha and personal archives.

The exhibition looks into the history of contemporary Bulgarian art through its performative self-presentation to the outside world in an attempt at a dialogue - real and imagined.

We can speculate that the identity of Bulgarian art is not an intrinsic characteristic, but is played out again and again, for and in front of the gaze of each new potential viewer. Who we are is simply a string of possible roles.

In the history of contemporary Bulgarian art, this inescapable external gaze is as much internally assimilated as it is subject to sabotage. It informs an inevitably double vision. Part of this ambivalence can be seen as a legacy of the artist's "internal emigration" during socialism and the desire to project a different meaning into the surrounding "sameness." Doubling, however, is also often used by the artist to confuse and challenge the external gaze in its preconceived ideas and the expectation to find something different, offering instead a mirror image, simply more of the same.

The exhibition takes as pretext the interest expressed by the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in including works of contemporary Bulgarian art in the museum's collection. Through the imaginary gaze of an international museum, the exhibition re-enacts the theatre of what we want (or don't want) the world to see of us.