site.btaBulgarian Commissioner for Venice Art Biennale Attends Meeting with Pope Francis

The Bulgarian commissioner for the 60th Venice Art Biennale, Nadezhda Dzhakova, was among a selected few to meet with Pope Francis while he was visiting this major forum of contemporary art. Dzhakova was accompanied by Lilia Topouzova, one of the artists who created The Neighbours, an interactive multimedia installation displayed at the Biennale, the project team said on Sunday.

Francis became the first pontiff to visit the biennial event. This was his first trip outside Rome since September 2023 and was followed with great interest. The visit clearly demonstrated the desire of the Catholic Church to maintain fruitful and close dialogue with the world of art and culture, according to Chiara Parisi, curator for the Holy See pavilion at the Biennale, who was quoted by AFP.

The artists invited to meet with Pope Francis are displaying works thematically related to human rights. The installation which Lilia Topouzova created together with Krasimira Butseva and Julian Chehirian explores the subject of post-communist memory. The Neighbours brings to light the silenced and faded memories of survivors of political violence during the communist era in Bulgaria from 1945 to 1989. Using recovered relics, video and sound design, the installation conveys the stories of people who survived after being held in forced labour camps and prisons.

Dzhakova said the fact that she and Topouzova were invited by the Holy See to the meeting with the Pope in Venice was a major sign of recognition for Bulgaria and its pavilion at the Biennale. She said The Neighbours offers "a mode of expression for the invisible, the anonymous and the marginalized; it visualizes their memories, lends them substance, image and sound, which are sealed in the mind of the viewer". According to her, these stories must be seen and heard because the authoritarian regimes of the past jeopardize the future.

Addressing the artists gathered in the Church of La Maddalena at the Giudecca women's prison facility in Venice, Pope Francis invited everyone to imagine a world where no human being is considered a stranger. "Beside you, I do not feel like a stranger," he said, "I feel at home." The Pope noted that this feeling "applies to every human being", because, "art has the status of a city of refuge", a city that "disobeys the rule of violence and discrimination in order to create forms of human belonging capable of recognizing, including, protecting, and embracing everyone".

"The world needs artists", Francis said.