site.btaKo-op Art Space to Host "This Exhibition Would Have Been about Kitsch" April 3-30

"This Exhibition Would Have Been Kitsch" is the title of Andreya Gandeva's curatorial project. In it, she gathers works by Veronika Desova, Sophia Grancharova, Aaron Roth, Kalin Serapionov, and Luchezar Boyadjiev and will show them from April 3 to 30 at the capital's Ko-op art space, the organizers said.

"The curatorial project is the result of Gandeva's master thesis at the National Academy of Arts. With this exhibition, we will open our new space on Dimitar Petkov Street, the team announced.

With the gradual opening of Bulgaria to the West, after the fall of the socialist regime, previously unknown opportunities, goods, services, and entertainment began to open up for the country and its citizens. Economic, market and social changes were taking place. The coveted imported goods in Corecom shops were replaced by branded clothes, expensive cars, luxury construction, and an overall longing for a new life. The political agitations at rallies, which until then featured the faces of Marx, Lenin, Zhivkov and other ideological figures, were literally displaced and replaced by the new idols of modern life - consumer products, the team says.

The new foundations for public life and social order were based on the ideas of parliamentary democracy and market economy. "The transition has begun, and its bearers must reorient themselves towards a post-socialist reality. This transformation, however, shifts the main focus to the satisfaction of consumer needs. These were years of thugs, new slang, visual vulgarity, and easy access to drugs... Life became an incredible mix between past and future, local and global, poor and rich, Western and Balkan. In this way, the phenomenon that emerged after 1989 can be figuratively called the first wave of kitsch in Bulgaria, the organizers added.