Exhibition “Flying and Other Everyday Needs” at NG and Sofia Arsenal

NATIONAL GALLERY/

SOFIA ARSENAL – MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

presents

Mariana Vasileva

Flying and Other Everyday Needs

July 3 – August 24, 2025

Curator: Dr. Nadezhda Djakova

Opening: Thursday, July 3, 2025, 6:00 p.m.

SAMSI, 2 Cherni Vrah Blvd.

Born in Bulgaria, Mariana Vasileva has lived and worked in Germany for many years. She has had few exhibitions in her home country. Now the audience can see her latest works, specially created for the museum space, as well as others – not shown in Bulgaria, but part of museum collections and collections around the world.

Mariana Vasileva’s solo exhibition includes sculptures, photographs, text, video art and installations. In all this variety of media, the author seeks the most accurate conceptual approach to realise her ideas. To the above, she also adds light, which she transforms into an object.

In her works, she achieves a sense of aesthetic balance, poetry and beauty, a semantic echo of thinking and feeling, resonating in her critical view of reality.

Mariana Vasileva’s exhibition began as an autobiographical story, in which childhood memories, the relationship with her mother and homeland meet, but inevitably moves to the political and social realities in which we live. “I am” is now “we are”. Small personal slogans have become manifestos for freedom and human well-being.

What is it like to live in a world devoid of empathy? For the artist, the most important thing is to remain yourself and preserve your personal freedom, as she emphasises with her work Be Yourself, which welcomes the viewer at the entrance to the museum. Flying is a daily necessity and a personal act that must be protected and defended.

“I try to express the contradiction within myself… within us: the hands that give us love and strength and those that want to harm us. They are mostly within ourselves or in our surroundings. But ultimately they are all part of a larger process – of human growth, constant change and the balance between different forces,” she shares.

For more information: Nadezhda Djakova, Head of SAMSI Branch, 0879834030