site.btaPhotographer Mihaela Aroyo Presents Exhibition with Bessarabian Bulgarians in Focus

A Bulgarian photographer, Mihaela Aroyo, will present an exhibition titled I Dream in Bulgarian unveiling the identity of the Bulgarian diaspora in Bessarabia in present-day Moldova and part of Ukraine. The exhibition will be presented at the Synthesis Gallery on July 30, the organizers said.

Aroyo has been exploring the history and culture of the region for five years. 

The photographer visited more than 60 localities in Moldova and Ukraine with a predominantly Bulgarian population. During her 14 trips she photographed the traditions, everyday life of the community members and recorded interviews, songs and poems they performed.

"When I first visited Bessarabia in 2019, I knew almost nothing about our diaspora there. In fact, that's exactly what brought me on a hot July day to In Contact gathering in the village of Stoianovca in Moldova, an annual meeting of Bulgarian youth from the region. On entering the village, I stopped the car in front of a house on the dusty road and in broken Russian I asked an old lady where the gathering was, and, to my surprise, she told me, ‘Speak Bulgarian!’. I had crossed two borders on the way there, and I felt at home, I was welcomed so warmly! The conversations in Bulgarian, the familiar cuisine, and some pop-folk hits from the 90s contributed to that. This trip only lasted a day, but it unexpectedly became the beginning of a long-term photography project," Aroyo said.

In 2021, the photographer again visited the In Contact gathering, this time in the village of Chushmeliy, Ukraine. There, Aroyo met Dana Mitanova, who told her that Bessarabian Bulgarians use at least three languages in their daily lives, their native Bulgarian, the official language, Ukrainian or Moldovan, and Russian as a common language in this multi-ethnic region. Mitanova added that she does not know what language she is thinking in, but she is dreaming in Bulgarian.

Tens of thousands of Bulgarians migrated from the Bulgarian lands to Bessarabia after the Russo-Turkish wars of 1806-1812 and 1828-1829 to avoid Ottoman invasion, the organizers of the exhibition pointed out. The reasons for the exodus were also linked to the Russian Empire's policy of settling a population in Bessarabia to enrich the region on the Empire's border, they explained.

So far, the project has been presented in Bolhrad, Ukraine (2021), in the villages of Tenevo and Golitsa, Bulgaria (2021), in exhibitions organized by Amorpha Foundation at Atelie Plastelin Sofia and Varna Central Railway Station (2022), in a group exhibition in Plovdiv (2022), and as part of The VII Foundation's Square Mile initiative in Arles, France (2024).

On August 29, Mihaela Aroyo will be a guest of Grace Thursdays with Garo Keshishyan in Varna, photobooks selected by the photographer will be presented at the Photosynthesis Library on August 1, on September 18 she will participate in a conversation on Bessarabian Bulgarians together with ethnologist Galin Georgiev and writer and journalist Dimitar Kenarov. On September 24, Aroyo will tour the exhibition I Dream in Bulgarian.

The exhibition is organized with the support of Photosynthesis. The project is partially funded by the Creative Initiatives and Creative Grants programs of the National Culture Fund.

Mihaela Aroyo is a documentary photographer born in 1993 in Varna. She started her professional career in 2014 as an intern at Trud daily, and in the period of 2017 - 2018 she was a photographer at BulFoto agency. Since 2020 she has been working as a freelancer and researching topics such as cultural identity, history, folklore and environment. Aroyo holds a Bachelor's degree in photography from New Bulgarian University (NBU) in Sofia.

Her photographs have been published in publications such as The New Yorker, National Geographic and Die Zeit. In 2022, National Geographic Bulgaria published her photographs and an article about the Bessarabian Bulgarians. In 2023, the project I Dream in Bulgarian won recognition from the Magnum Foundation with second place at the Inge Morath Award, an award given to female photographers under the age of 30. In the same year, Aroyo won The Everyday Projects Award, a grant to support her work on the same project.