Natalia Jordanova at Gallery Cu29

Artist: Natalia Jordanova

Exhibition title: Aftermath: no humanity, no art

Venue: Gallery Cu29, Kapana, Plovdiv

Date: December 9, 2023 – January 27, 2024

Photography: All images copyright of the artist and Gallery Cu29, Kapana

Floating through the deep currents of imagination and making speculative projections is a futurologist practice. Both often reveal something about the present as much as about the future moment they suggest.

In her recent work, Natalia has been exploring her concept of deconstructed film and making installations that move between different timelines, proposing historical continuity and offering a narrative where science and fiction hang together. For her current presentation, she is examining time differently. In light of the current global political events, she does not need to look too far into the future to see the dystopian promise approaching.

In her exhibition “Aftermath: no humanity, no art”, developed for Cu29 space, she probes the concept of catastrophism. The work marks a scenario not in a different timeframe from the one we inhabit. It is a ‘scene’ that is now. In that scene, the events had already happened, the time had already passed, and the ideas of the map and its territory had finally moved away from each other. Exploring the politics of catastrophism, she asks: Is it really true that if there is no conflict, there is no story, and can we imagine a future where humans live up to the promise of progress and do not cause the ultimate catastrophe to happen.

no science, no fiction
no natural knowledge, no artificial intelligence no adversity, no resilience
no collapse, no rebirth
no diversity, no innovation
no nature, no culture
no ethics, no trust
no darkness, no change
no human, no pain
no justice, no peace, no freedom
no humanity, no art

Natalia Jordanova is an interdisciplinary visual artist born in 1991 in Sofia, Bulgaria, working between Amsterdam and Sofia. Within her practice, she builds context-aware installations by deploying various practices. As part of her ever-developing quest for possible worlds and the extensive use of speculation, Natalia’s artistic practice is a projection of the future, subjective synthesis and material proposition of what defines the present moment.

She holds an MA from the Dirty Art department of Sandberg Institute in The Netherlands (2020), a BA in Fine Arts from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2018), a BA in Photography from the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Bulgaria (2013) and participation in Erasmus program at Central Saint Martins, London (2017).

Her most recent presentations include Something Else Cairo Biennale, a residency and an exhibition at
the Goethe-Institut Cairo (2023), a group exhibition, “Needles in a Haystack,” at Bulgaria’s National Art Gallery, a solo show “Deep daydream reality: The Opening Scene,” at Sofia City Art Gallery, a visual art residency at iMAL, Brussels, organised by BOZAR and Goethe-Institut, Belgium, in the context of the Halaqat project; She was part of Sofia Art Week in September 2021; duo show at POST, Arnhem; solo exhibition at Rosa Stern, Munich and a Virtual Reality residency “Authentic Spaces” in Zeitz, Germany. In 2020, she participated in the Unfair Temporary Museum in Amsterdam, a group exhibition at the Sofia City Art Gallery for the BAZA Award for contemporary art, and a solo presentation at Art Rotterdam 2020, where she was nominated for the NN Art Award. Her work has been exhibited internationally in The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Belgium, Egypt and the UK.

Natalia Jordanova, Aftermath: no humanity, no art, 2023, Installation view, Gallery Cu29, Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Courtesy of the Artist and Cu29

Natalia Jordanova, A Seat at the Table (inclusion, representation, participation, equity, empowerment, voice, diversity, engagement, access, and influence), 2023, mixed media installation, copper-filled 3D print, artificial vines, fabric, wooden table, size: 180 x 110 x 80 cm