site.btaExhibition by Mihaela Aroyo Dedicated to Bulgarian Population in Bessarabia to Be Presented in Warsaw

An exhibition by Mihaela Aroyo, a documentary research on the topic of the Bulgarian population in the geographical region of Bessarabia, will be presented at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute  in Warsaw, Poland, on March 27, said the Institute on its Facebook page.

The event will be implemented jointly with the Embassy of Bulgaria in the Polish capital.

Mihaela Aroyo documents the culture and explores the identity of the Bulgarian diaspora in Bessarabia with an emphasis on the history of the region. For five years, she visited over 60 settlements with a predominantly Bulgarian population. During her 15 trips, she filmed the traditions, the daily life of people and created friendships. She recorded audio interviews, songs and poems with members of the community, the Bulgarian Cultural Institute informed.

Aroyo is a documentary photographer. She was born in 1993 in Varna. She began her professional career in 2014 as an intern at the Trud newspaper and in the period 2017 - 2018 she was a full-time photojournalist at the Bulphoto agency. Since 2020 she has been working as a freelancer and researching topics such as cultural identity, history, folklore and the environment. Since 2023 she has been teaching photography in Varna, noted the Institute.

Aroyo has a bachelor's degree in photography from the New Bulgarian University (2018) and a master's degree in history from the Veliko Tarnovo University. Her photographs have been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, National Geographic and Die Zeit.

The Bulgarian Cultural Institute also shared information about the Bessarabia region: "This is a multiethnic region located within the present-day borders of Ukraine and Moldova, where Ukrainians, Moldovans, Russians, Bulgarians, Gagauz, Romanians and Albanians reside. Today, between 250,000 and 300,000 people live in Ukraine and Moldova, self-identifying as Bulgarians. Their settlement in this area is the result of a number of political events and military disputes between the Russian and Ottoman Empires in the 19th century. Since then, the Bessarabian Bulgarians have taken root in the region and absorbed elements from other cultures. But to this day they preserve their native language and traditions."