site.bta3D Mapping Gives New Lease on Life to Forgotten Sgraffito Wall Paintings in Sofia, Plovdiv, Veliko Tarnovo

Three forgotten sgraffito wall paintings will get a new lease on life with the help of 3D mapping on the initiative of young interdisciplinary artists of the Heritage Illuminated project, the team said.

The first installation, in Sofia, will be presented on April 26. It will use a 3D mapping technique, projecting videos or animations to create optical effects or illusions on a 15 by 25 m monumental mural by Stoyan Iliev, titled Bulgarplod, in G.S. Rakovski St., on a side facade next door to the Ministry of Economy and Industry, the organizers said. 

In Plovdiv (South Central Bulgaria), the object of the installation is one of the few monumental works by Georgi "the Elephant" Bozhilov, dated 1968. This highly valuable mural is located at 2 Saborna St. and is devoted to Bulgarian book publishing pioneer Hristo G. Danov. There, Heritage Illuminated will use 3D technique to integrate various visual methods of calligraphy and printing, the organizers said.

In Veliko Tarnovo (North Central Bulgaria), a video installation will be performed during the Varusha Yug Festival in August. The sgraffito mural concerned is titled Apotheosis and was done by Marcho Dzhanovski in 1974. It is located in Stefan Stambolov St. and is devoted to Kolyo Ficheto, a remarkable self-taught architect and master building of the Bulgarian National Revival period. This is the first sgraffito wall painting to be restored in Bulgaria, by a team led by Milen Dzhanovski in 2018, in the presence of the author himself.

The idea of the project is to focus public interest on the conservation of cultural heritage, said visual artist Vladislav Iliev. Together with Ivelina Ivanova and the colleagues of Studio Phormatik, they want to demonstrate the beauty of sgraffito and SD mapping as completely different techniques.

"We selected the work in Veliko Tarnovo as an example of good preservation of wall paintings in Bulgaria," the Heritage Illuminated team said. Most of these works are not that lucky. Most of the 1,200 or so sgraffito works dating from the 1945-1990 period which are registered in Bulgaria are either non-existent or in a bad condition. Quite a lot of them have been either covered or destroyed in the process of energy renovation of the buildings concerned. Hence the urgent need to project and restore sgraffito as part of Bulgaria's cultural heritage.