Resume of Nia Pushkarova I am an artist from Bulgaria, have graduated Fine arts in ReadingUniversity, UK in 1995 and ever since I work and live in Sofia, Bulgaria. The main medium of my work is painting and video. During the years I have got to the point of extending my practice as anartist into making artist run initiative for making a platform forcommunication through the arts. The festival I have made is called WaterTower Art Fest (www.watertowerartfest.com). Over the years the festival hasproved itself to be internationally respectable event despite itsalternative, urban underground independent profile; it managed to withstandthe binding forces and offers a platform for communication form artists toartists, people to people, on a freely based unbiased communication througharts. I see myself as a mediator of the western culture and eastern in away – dealing with art helps me situate myself better in the everyday lifebeing in Bulgaria or elsewhere. In my travels I search for the hidden signsthat reveal to me of different lives and truths. The artistic practice ofmine has become fuller by having the different aspects of having to dealwith art and life and its outcomes and reaching out to people. Thequestions of feminine expression are an important one for me and I doexplore it in my paintings and videos. Another topic of mine is the sharing – experience, ideas and memories so I do pay certain attention in my art tothat too. So in the recent years in my art I incorporated performance and lifesituation as a main inspiration to the work I am doing with differentmediums - painting, photography and video, as well as performance. Nia Pushkarova Sofia01.06.2015

e-mail: nia@watertowerartfest.com / http://nia.watertowerartfest.com

Paintings

Man & Woman, Project with Cristian Rieloff2013, 4 x acrylic on canvas, 70 x 100 cm each

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2009, oil on canvas, 25 x 20 cm 2004, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm

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Longing for Love Project - paintings series,acrylic and charcoal on canvas

Shizo-Saint, 2015, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm

2009, oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm

Deep PMS, 2004, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm

Parrot, 2005, oil on canvas, 45 x 56 cm

Passing Through the Autumn, 2000, oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm

Two Things of Something that Doesn’t Exist1997, oil on canvas, 56 x 70 cm

2012, acrylic and collage, 56 x 65 cm Lomea, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 56 x 70 cm

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The Flute, 2006, oil on canvas, 56 x 70 cm 2009, oil on canvas, 56 x 70 cm

Music, 2004, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm 2009, oil on canvas and collage, 56 x 65 cm

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First Steps, 2009, oil on canvas, 56 x 70 cm Zoomorphic Series, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 45 x 56 cm

Green Woman, 2005, oil on canvas, 45 x 56 cm After Michelangelo’s Sixtine Chapel, 2009, oil on canvas, 56 x 65 cm

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2014, acrylic on paper, 24 x 45 cm

2000, oil on canvas, 45 x 56 cm

Hyena, 2015, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 70 x 100 cm

Hyenas,2015, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 70 x 100 cm

Deer Me (Zoomorphic Series),

2015, acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 70 x 100 cm

Photography

1996, photo session Varna

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1995, photos

1997, “Rollman” photo session

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2006, Pentimento Projectwith the help of Photo Studio Alan Group

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““I” “Love” “You” “Terribly” “Much””

Sketches & Drawi

ngs

1996, pencil drawing

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1997, charcoal drawing

1996, pencil drawing

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1996, pencil drawing

Adi, 2004, pastel drawing 1995, drawing on paper

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1995, silk screen print

1995, silk screen print

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Angry Cherubim2007, ink drawing on paper

Installation

, Video, Performance

Expulsion of Adam and Eve, 2013, single-channel video, X’ XX’’About the work - The expulsion of Adam and Eve was first screened at our Temporary protected spacesin WTAF 2013, hoping we will find more constant protected spaces in the near future.Credits to: Rumen Dimitrov - Popa and Ingebjørg Torgersen, Instudio

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Door, 2009, video installationdone during Water Tower Art Fest in 2009 - with its fairy tale mission the abandoned water tower

showed its inhabitants for a few days invisible to others for the rest of the time - sprung from the female collective consciousness - neglected but not forgotten.

With the help of “Studio 1+1”

http://youtu.be/UNDTWMo8YkE

Indigenous Nia, 2010, video installation performance Healing personal wounds through what you do and who you want to be. Clairvoyant way of making it happen and inducing it into your life in spite of the circumstances of your every day social and personal life, not doing much on spot - just reading and drying out after a bath. But the place of projection is above the female bath sector in Bankya’s mineral baths in a frame and evokes notions of stability and balance between gender and social responsibility in spite of and because of personal issues!

Showed at Water Tower Art Fest 2010 – Bankya Mineral bath venuehttp://youtu.be/qjUSZc1cHgU

Photo installation Translocal meeting Palma, 2013

Installation at Hospital for Lovers Exhibition, 2013 at Raiko Alexiev Gallerycurated by Dimitar Grozdanov 

KNOWN METHODS FOR CURING PATIENTS OF THE HOSPITAL FOR LOVERS - WITH FLUCTUATING EFFECT.

Sample taken from clinical pathways of patient with established diagnosis, with ambulatory card N: 127465624893190123- 23001230130230234023402340130130130230234023401340123401234013401234023402340340134012340134023402340234023402340234023402340234023402340234023402340234023402340234023402349234923402340234 ...

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Participation at Supermarket Art Fair 2013Installation The Application - collaborative project with Cristian Rieloff

Live photography developing performance, Nomadic Village Pavlikeni, 2009

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Performance, Lomea, 2013

Looking Through the Eyes of Another

Presented at:Contempo, Varna, 2012Haifa Festival, Israel, 2013

Water Tower Art Fest

WTAF is an initiative started only with a few people in Sofia encompassing ideas of art, creativity, urban renewal and alternative art spaces. Gradually it became an internation-al event gathering artists from around the world that came together as independent entities representing their individual style and search for mutual understanding and cosmopolitanism in the face of widely spread apathy and unwillingness to cooperate.

The motivation has been a major point to all of us - to communicate freely on the basis of artistic expression within spaces that allow our imagination to run wild and at the same time reflect upon history and architecture, social and other issues as well as ur-ban habitat– to find our own place within a particular city structure.

The places inspired us and gave direction to the format which the festival took shape and form - through communication. We felt that by doing this we have the will power to change our own surrounding where we live, how we communicate with space and transcend the past and future in a way possible only through art with direct response to the social environment, transcribing histories, memories, textures and functions into art. It is an an injection of international creative thinking of alternative spaces in Eastern Europe.

“We believe that art has a function in the society and we delegate that function back to it.”

WATER TOWER ART FEST