Natalia Jordanova
As part of her ever-developing quest for possible worlds, the artistic practice of Natalia Jordanova (1991, Sofia, Bulgaria) is a subjective synthesis and material proposition of what defines the present moment. Through speculative fiction her work is a projection of the future, fabulating the unknown unknowns.
Jordanova builds context-aware installations through the deployment of various practices. They translate materialities and study the sculptural possibilities in the exchange between the digital and physical, the flat and three-dimensional. Her work engages with the shift of these realms, weaving together narratives of past accumulations and future speculations. Through the frameworks of science and history, she explore what it means to be human today in the interplay of natural and artificial beings, as well as human and non-human agents. She focuses on the condition defined by our relationship with technology, image, and language mediation, as well as the new understanding of materiality in a network-dominated age.
The artist examines how recent technological and tool progress alters emotionality and will affect human-to-human and human-to-machine communication in the foreseeable future. Her most recent work utilizes generative artificial intelligence to explore its conceptual possibilities at the intersection of poetry and criticality. She investigates its fast-developing implications for human life and how it changes our understanding of reality. Her interests lie in its conceptual potential to contribute to historical continuity, care for silenced feminist histories, and question the role of AI in evolution.
Exhibitions & Fairs
Press
mediakunst.net
Gods and robots – a conversation with Natalia Jordanova
24 February 2024
Read ↗Metropolis M
Natalia jordanova alternatieve lichamelijkheid
18 November 2023
Read ↗DAMN Magazine
Natalia jordanova something like a biocentric reality
1 March 2023
Read ↗Art Viewer
Screen: naive enough to have concerns about one’s own existence
4 August 2021
Read ↗CV
1991, Sofia, Bulgaria, lives and works in Amsterdam
Education
Dirty Art (MA), Sandberg Institute/ Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam 2018-2020
Fine Arts, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague 2014-2018
Central Saint Martins, UAL, London 2016-2017
BA of Photography, National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, Sofia 2009-2013
Awards and nominations
BAZA Award for contemporary art, Bulgaria /upcoming/ 2025
Winner of Cultural Perspectives Foundation’s “Per Aspera ad Astra“
Fellowship Program 2022
Nominee for BAZA Award for contemporary art, Bulgaria 2020
Nominee for NN Art Award at Art Rotterdam 2020
Nominee for BAZA Award for contemporary art, Bulgaria 2018
The Secret Way, video, Trans – ideology Short Film Festival
– Berlin, Short list 2012
Otec Paisii TEXT – Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Short list 2012
Best photography prize in the exhibition of Forum Honoris Causa,
National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts, Sofia 2011
Photosynthesis prize of FOTOAKADEMIKA, Sofia 2010
The Magic of Color, contest, First prize and scholarship, Sofia 2010
Selected exhibitions
BAZA Award for contemporary art, Bulgaria, upcoming 2025
Hommages, Galerie Fleur & Wouter, Amsterdam Art Week 2025
Unfair Amsterdam, Gashouder van Westergas 2024
De Brakke Grond, ADE, Amsterdam /solo/ 2024
The gods were tired when you fell, Saeva Dupka Cave, Bulgaria 2024
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously, Arosita Gallery, Sofia /solo/ 2024
To–Do List, 1m2 Tam, Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria /solo/ 2024
The Nature of Relations, BUNA forum for contemporary art, Varna 2024
Aftermath: no humanity, no art, Cu29, Plovdiv /solo/ 2023
Something Else ||| Biennale, Cairo /solo/ 2023
Someone’s Utopia, Goethe-Institut, Cairo 2023
Needles in a Haystack, National Art Gallery, Sofia 2023
Present Myths or: Fifteen posters of nonexistent
people and donkeys, watching a film at a locksmith atelier,
Forum for Contemporary Visual Arts BUNA, Varna /solo/ 2023
Ludic Century, Kunstpodium T, Tilburg 2023
Deep daydream-reality: The Opening Scene,
Sofia City Art Gallery, Bulgaria /solo/ 2023
Process Anatomy, Project space Structura Gallery, Bulgaria /solo/ 2022
How Soon is Now, Structura Gallery, Bulgaria 2022
Market of desire: earthly/heavenly 2021
Visits to Other Possible Worlds, Sofia Art Week,
Goethe-Institut Bulgaria 2021
NO ARTIST CAN PREDICT THE FUTURE?, KO-OP, Sofia 2021
Symbiosis Series, POST, Arnhem 2021
Cold Sweat, Het Hem, Amsterdam 2020
The Console, Rosa Stern, Munich, Germany /solo/ 2020
Authentic Spaces, Zeitz, Germany 2020
BAZA Award for contemporary art, Sofia City Art Gallery, Bulgaria 2020
Unfair Temporary Museum, Amsterdam 2020
Art Rotterdam, New Art Section /solo/ 2020
Residencies
Halaqat project and Cairotronica at Goethe-Institut Cairo, Egypt 2023
Visual art residency at iMAL, Brussels, as part of the
Halaqat project part 1, BOZAR and Goethe-Institut Belgium 2022
‘Freispiel’, Rosa Stern Space, Munich, Germany 2020
THIS IS FAKE, Zeitz, Germany 2020
Works
