Borjana Ventzislavova captures the immersion in the game with the somewhat forgotten games from the recent past. The exhibition Real Games is motivated by the artist’s desire to bring to mind the experience and the memories of her generation of the entertainment outdoors with live games, sometimes with simple or self-made toys.

The five-channel video installation shows already grown-up children invited to continue the game of paper blowgun darts or the game of elastics. The protagonists are people of various walks of life invited to play a role by taking part in an enjoyable reenactment, remembering their childhood and the very game with its rules at the same time. In the situations provoked by Borjana Ventzislavova, the participants play while being themselves, in their role of working adults.

The games played in the video installation are linked to the memories of the generations that grew up in the 80s. Team games, in addition to requiring physical presence and contact, unlike the static screen experience, provoke jubilation and certain theatricality, highlighted in Borjana Ventzislavova’s videos by the appearance of the adult players.

The players in the situations staged in the video installation are children and adults, serious and incredulous at the same time, players in their own manner and their own life and playing in someone’s political ambition, who can always give their credit of trust to the game so that it will come off or the other way round, it will lose its magic and end. It is namely those various aspects and meta-levels of the “Games of Fate” that the artist covers in the exhibition Real Games through various types of media such as video, photography, text and objects.

Borjana Ventzislavova often considers the social transformations that concern individual groups of today’s society. Her characters are real people, whom the artist puts in a situation or an environment which reveals the discrepancies between personal expectations and reality, arising namely from the paradoxes of the modern world.

Curator: Vera Mlechevska

featuring:

Vladimir Mishaykov, Georgi Petrov, Doychin Kotlarov, Linda Ruseva, Martina Staneva – Antonova, Sava Bobchev, Garo Ashikyan, Yana Georgieva

cinematographer: Petko Lungov

sound: Veselin Zografov, Stefan Pashaliyski

assistant producer: Elena Radeva

The exhibition is realised with the kind support of the Austrian Embassy in Sofia and the Arts and Culture division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria.

About Borjana Ventzislavova:

Borjana Ventzislavova is an interdisciplinary artist who works in the field of photography, film/video, installations, performance and media art. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and included in numerous media and film festivals. She has received a number of awards, recognitions and scholarships. In 2017, she was presented with Vienna’s Fine Arts Award, in 2013 – the Austrian state scholarship for fine arts, 2009 – start scholarship, 2006 – the award of the film festival in Cologne, awards for art from Sussman Stiftung, Otto Putscher fund, etc. She was a resident artist at Banff/Canada (Banff Centre), Athens (Snehta), London (ACF), Rome (BKA), Newcastle (ISIS Arts), Berkeley (CEC Artslink), Los Angeles (MAK Schindler), Chicago (BKA), and in 2019 she will be in New York. Her works have been included in a number of private and public collections.

Borjana lives and works in Vienna and Sofia. She gained her MA in Visual Media Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 2017 she was granted honorable Austrian citizenship for her achievements in the visual arts.