Sofia City Art Gallery and Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia together with: Foundation for a Civil Society, New York and Young Visual Artists Awards present Exhibition of the BAZA Award for contemporary art nominees.

The BAZA award for contemporary art is a part of the competition network Young Visual Artists Awards (yvaa.net), held yearly in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Kosovo, Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. The connection between the separate competitions is established by the Foundation for a Civil Society in New York, which provides the awards – a six-week creative residency in New York for one artist from each country. Each of the national competitions has its own name, schedule and managing art institution. Author of the name BAZA and initiator of the award itself is Maria Vassileva. The Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia (ica-sofia.org) is responsible for the realization of the competition and organizes it together with the Sofia City Art Gallery.

The award winner’s stay in New York comprises becoming acquainted with the art scene and art life, meetings with curators and colleagues. The artists have working studios at their disposal as well as the opportunity to organize an exhibition in the space of the International Studio and Curatorial Program (iscp-nyc.org).
The BAZA award winners so far are: Rada Boukova (2008), Samuil Stoyanov (2009), Anton Terziev (2010), Vikenti Komitski (2011) and Leda Ekimova (2012).

The selection of the award winner is made by jury of well-established painters, curators and representatives of art institutions. In 2013 members of the jury are: Maria Vassileva (curator, chief curator of the Sofia City Art Gallery), Iara Boubnova (curator, director of ICA-Sofia), Nedko Solakov (artist), Boris Missirkov (photographer), Georgi Bogdanov (photographer), Olivier Boissiere (contemporary art collector), Sara Reisman (curator, Vilcek Foundation Fellow). Besides joining the jury for the second stage of the competition, the visit of Sara Reisman aims for becoming acquainted with the modern Bulgarian art scene.

In the upcoming exhibition the eight 2013 nominees will present predominantly new projects. For Zoran Georgiev and Kiril Kuzmanov this is the second nomination for the BAZA award. Their works of art as well as the ones of Iskra Blagoeva, Stela Vasileva, Nikolay Zanev, and Dimitar Solakov are already popular with the public. Emilian Lalev and Sasho Popovski exhibit for the first time. Within the exhibition the authors will display objects, installations, paintings, drawings and video.

The BAZA award winner for 2013 is Kiril Kuzmanov.