The Bulgarian pavilion at the 60th International Venice Biennale explores the silenced memories of survivors of state violence from 1945 to 1989 in an evocative multimedia installation titled The Neighbours. It will be exhibited in the Sala Tiziano at the Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, near the Ponte dell’Accademia.
Curated by Vasil Vladimirov and featuring artists Krasimira Butseva,Lilia Topouzova, and Julian Chehirian, the installation employs found objects, video, and sound to convey the stories of individuals subjected to persecution in forced labour camps and prisons. The multidisciplinary project is rooted in extensive scholarly research and over forty interviews conducted by the practitioners. It focuses on the intricacies of how individuals remember and articulate their experiences in the aftermath of traumatic events based on Lilia Topouzova's theoretical framework.
“The exhibition stages untold stories by a series of “domestic foreigners” who faced persecution, imprisonment without trial, and endured forced labour camps for reasons ranging from political beliefs to appearance. It documents the systematic persecution that affected political dissidents, many of them on the left, peasants who wanted to hold on to their land, artists, queer people, Turkish, Roma, and Muslim minorities, and countless ordinary people who deviated from the regime's narrow ideals. The project not only serves as a poignant memorial for the victims but also offers a critical reflection on the oppressive political climate of the past and the current institutional hesitancy to confront its legacy,” - Vasil Vladimirov.
The installation acts as a form of inquiry, inviting audiences to enter, sit, and bear witness to survivors’ trauma but also to their resilience and refusal to be written out of the historical record. The installation not only encapsulates fragments of domestic spaces—mirroring the survivors' homes—but also employs video projections, sound and automated technology to evoke presence. Scattered items recovered from the camp sites such as stones and water visually connect the material world of the camps to domestic spaces, illustrating how traumatic memory permeates everyday life.
The Neighbours enacts a space of care and collective healing, utilising the language of absence to nurture remembrance as an act of resistance against oblivion. It brings the Bulgarian narrative into global conversations on truth, reconciliation, and collective memory and emphasises art's vital role in engaging with complex realities and fostering reflection.
The 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia runs from 20 April to 24 November 2024 under the motto, Foreigners Everywhere - Stranieri Ovunque. This edition will examine themes of migration, exile, ‘outsiders’, and foreignness.
The project was selected as a result of a competition organised by the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture. In 2024, Bulgaria will register its eleventh national participation (the first was in 1910, followed by 1942, 1948, 1964, 1993, 1999, 2007, 2011, 2019, and 2022).
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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