site.btaAnnual Festival of Contemporary Ceramics to Be Held in Sofia and Oreshak

A festival for contemporary Bulgarian ceramic art will be held in the village of Oreshak and Sofia. Between November 1 and December 9, the forum will be in in the village of Oreshak (at the National Exhibition of arts and crafts complex), and between December 12 and January 3, 2025, it will be held at Sofia's Art Hotel 158, the Union of Bulgarian Artists (UBA) said on Wednesday. The festival is organized every year by UBA's Ceramics Section and is open to all Bulgarian artists working in the field of ceramics, as well as to foreign participants. Artists from North Korea, Romania, and Italy participated in the last couple of editions of the event, the organizers said.

Elena Videnova, Secretary of UBA's Ceramics Section, explained that the festival is being held for the seventh consecutive year and once again it will draw the attention of different generations of artists working with clay. The 2024 edition of the festival is the first to visit different cities. A total of 38 artists from Bulgaria are participating in the exhibition, she added.

In her words, Bulgarian ceramic art is dynamic and diverse, combining tradition and innovation. "Many contemporary Bulgarian artists, like their counterparts around the world, draw inspiration from folk traditions, including typical traditional techniques and motifs, and adapt them to contemporary postmodern aesthetic standards. Folkloric identity and motifs often run deep into the clay and are a primal inspiration of every nation. This gives ceramic works around the world a unique local character," Videnova also noted.