ART AFFAIRS AND DOCUMENTS FOUNDATION
The Art Affairs and Documents Foundation is an association of curators who seek to bring forward and promote contemporary art. The foundation is the initiator and producer of art events that contribute to the establishment of an environment of communication between all contemporary forms of visual art. Among the foundation’s priorities are the studies of the connection between art and the contemporary situation, as well as the laying of a special emphasis on social and political problems, points of debate, and specific cultural phenomena. The AADFoundation’s founders work for the expansion and development of Bulgaria’s art setting, as well as for the spreading of Bulgarian art abroad. Drawing on the experience that they have accrued from their individual projects so far, they join efforts to establish a tradition of productive and consequential activities in their own country. The foundation’s activities are the result of the work of curators Dessislava Dimova, Vera Mlechevska, Vessela Nozharova, and Stefka Tsaneva.
PROJECTS
SOFIA ART PROJECTS is an international exhibition of art in public space, held annually at the Sofia Largo since 2021.
GLEDANE S RAZBIRANE (Seeing comprehension) is a project by Stefka Tsaneva for art mediation in museums and education in the field of contemporary art.
DESPOINA is a curatorial project by Dessislava Dimova that initiates collaborations with artists and writers around the themes of the ecology of life, ritual as a form of communication with the world and the virtual world as part of our surrounding nature.
HISTORY INBETWEEN is a curatorial project by Vessela Nozharova aiming to stimulate the relationship between contemporary art and history.
CRITICS IN SPACE is a video series for experimental art criticism.
TEAM
VERA MLECHEVSKA
Vera Mlechevska's curatorial experience ranges from research and exhibition projects to hybrid events that combine curatorial practice and performance.
Her exhibitions are often the result of research projects in collaboration with public or private institutions.
Mlechevska teaches as a guest lecturer at the Photography Department of the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts and is a researcher with a specific interest in Bulgarian and Eastern European art. She defended her dissertation at BAS on the practices of institutional criticism in Bulgaria.
VESSELA NOZHAROVA
Vessela Nozharova (b. 1974 in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria) is an art historian, critic and curator based in Sofia. She graduated 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.
DESSISLAVA DIMOVA
Dessislava Dimova is a writer and curator based in Brussels. She is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia. She holds an MA in philosophy from CRMEP, Middlesex University, London and in Art History from the Bulgarian Academy of Arts, Sofia. In 2010 she curated Thank You for Your Understanding - 2. International Antakya Biennial, Antakya, Turkey. Other projects include The Spam Show (internet, 2007-2008) and School for Revolution (Kultura weekly, 1 Magazine, 2008 – ongoing). Her first novel The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published in Bulgarian in 2009 (Razvitie, Sofia). She is a founding member of Art Affairs and Documents Foundation, Sofia and founding editor of blistermagazine.com.
STEFKA TSANEVA
Stefka Tsaneva is engaged in curatorial, critical and educational activities in the field of contemporary art. She studied Scandinavian Studies and Media Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin and Comparative Art Studies at New Bulgarian University. Over the years, she has developed various projects for art mediation and promoting dialogue in contemporary art, such as Looking with Understanding (since 2021), Art Start: Young Artists to Follow (together with Vesela Nozharova, since 2017), Shared Studio with Artists Ö (2018), artist talks.