Resume of Nia Pushkarova I am an artist from Bulgaria, have graduated Fine arts in Reading University, UK in 1995 and ever since I work and live in Sofia, Bulgaria. The main medium of my work is painting and video. During the years I have got to the point of extending my practice as an artist into making artist run initiative for making a platform for communication through the arts. The festival I have made is called Water Tower Art Fest (www.watertowerartfest.com). Over the years the festival has proved itself to be internationally respectable event despite its alternative, urban underground independent profile; it managed to withstand the binding forces and offers a platform for communication form artists to artists, people to people, on a freely based unbiased communication through arts. I see myself as a mediator of the western culture and eastern in a way – dealing with art helps me situate myself better in the everyday life being in Bulgaria or elsewhere. In my travels I search for the hidden signs that reveal to me of different lives and truths. The artistic practice of mine has become fuller by having the different aspects of having to deal with art and life and its outcomes and reaching out to people. The questions of feminine expression are an important one for me and I do explore it in my paintings and videos. Another topic of mine is the sharing – experience, ideas and memories so I do pay certain attention in my art to that too. So in the recent years in my art I incorporated performance and life situation as a main inspiration to the work I am doing with different mediums - painting, photography and video, as well as performance. Nia Pushkarova Sofia 01.06.2015 e-mail: nia@watertowerartfest.com
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http://nia.watertowerartfest.com
Paintings
Man & Woman, Project with Cristian Rieloff 2013, 4 x acrylic on canvas, 70 x 100 cm each
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2009, oil on canvas, 25 x 20 cm
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2004, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm
Longing for Love Project - paintings series, acrylic and charcoal on canvas
Shizo-Saint, 2015, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm
Deep PMS, 2004, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm 2009, oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm
Parrot, 2005, oil on canvas, 45 x 56 cm
Passing Through the Autumn, 2000, oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm
Two Things of Something that Doesn’t Exist 1997, oil on canvas, 56 x 70 cm
2012, acrylic and collage, 56 x 65 cm
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Lomea, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 56 x 70 cm
The Flute, 2006, oil on canvas, 56 x 70 cm
2009, oil on canvas, 56 x 70 cm
Music, 2004, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm
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2009, oil on canvas and collage, 56 x 65 cm
First Steps, 2009, oil on canvas, 56 x 70 cm
Zoomorphic Series, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 45 x 56 cm
Green Woman, 2005, oil on canvas, 45 x 56 cm
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After Michelangelo’s Sixtine Chapel, 2009, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm
2000, oil on canvas, 45 x 56 cm
2014, acrylic on paper, 24 x 45 cm
Hyena, 2015, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 70 x 100 cm Hyenas, 2015, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 70 x 100 cm
Deer Me (Zoomorphic Series), 2015, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 70 x 100 cm
Photography
1996, photo session Varna
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1995, photos
1997, “Rollman” photo session
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2006, Pentimento Project with the help of Photo Studio Alan Group
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““I” “Love” “You” “Terribly” “Much””
Sketches & Drawings
1996, pencil drawing
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1997, charcoal drawing
1996, pencil drawing
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1996, pencil drawing
Adi, 2004, pastel drawing
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1995, drawing on paper
1995, silk screen print
1995, silk screen print
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Angry Cherubim 2007, ink drawing on paper
Installation, Video, Performance
Expulsion of Adam and Eve, 2013, single-channel video, X’ XX’’ About the work - The expulsion of Adam and Eve was first screened at our Temporary protected spaces in WTAF 2013, hoping we will find more constant protected spaces in the near future. Credits to: Rumen Dimitrov - Popa and Ingebjørg Torgersen, Instudio
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Door, 2009, video installation done during Water Tower Art Fest in 2009 - with its fairy tale mission the abandoned water tower showed its inhabitants for a few days invisible to others for the rest of the time - sprung from the female collective consciousness - neglected but not forgotten. With the help of “Studio 1+1� http://youtu.be/UNDTWMo8YkE
Indigenous Nia, 2010, video installation performance Healing personal wounds through what you do and who you want to be. Clairvoyant way of making it happen and inducing it into your life in spite of the circumstances of your every day social and personal life, not doing much on spot - just reading and drying out after a bath. But the place of projection is above the female bath sector in Bankya’s mineral baths in a frame and evokes notions of stability and balance between gender and social responsibility in spite of and because of personal issues! Showed at Water Tower Art Fest 2010 – Bankya Mineral bath venue http://youtu.be/qjUSZc1cHgU
Photo installation Translocal meeting Palma, 2013
Installation at Hospital for Lovers Exhibition, 2013 at Raiko Alexiev Gallery curated by Dimitar Grozdanov KNOWN METHODS FOR CURING PATIENTS OF THE HOSPITAL FOR LOVERS - WITH FLUCTUATING EFFECT. Sample taken from clinical pathways of patient with established diagnosis, with ambulatory card N: 12746562489319012323001230130230234023402340130130130230234023401340123401234013401234023402340340134 01234013402340234023402340234023402340234023402340234023402340234023402340234023402 3402349234923402340234 ...
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Participation at Supermarket Art Fair 2013 Installation The Application - collaborative project with Cristian Rieloff
Live photography developing performance, Nomadic Village Pavlikeni, 2009
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Performance, Lomea, 2013
Looking Through the Eyes of Another Presented at: Contempo, Varna, 2012 Haifa Festival, Israel, 2013
Water Tower Art Fest WATER TOWER ART FEST WTAF is an initiative started only with a few people in Sofia encompassing ideas of art, creativity, urban renewal and alternative art spaces. Gradually it became an international event gathering artists from around the world that came together as independent entities representing their individual style and search for mutual understanding and cosmopolitanism in the face of widely spread apathy and unwillingness to cooperate. The motivation has been a major point to all of us - to communicate freely on the basis of artistic expression within spaces that allow our imagination to run wild and at the same time reflect upon history and architecture, social and other issues as well as urban habitat– to find our own place within a particular city structure. The places inspired us and gave direction to the format which the festival took shape and form - through communication. We felt that by doing this we have the will power to change our own surrounding where we live, how we communicate with space and transcend the past and future in a way possible only through art with direct response to the social environment, transcribing histories, memories, textures and functions into art. It is an an injection of international creative thinking of alternative spaces in Eastern Europe. “We believe that art has a function in the society and we delegate that function back to it.�