For the 18th consecutive year, the BAZA Award for Contemporary Art is being presented in Bulgaria. It was initiated by Maria Vassileva and is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia and the Edmond Demirdjian Foundation. BAZA is part of the international network for young visual artists awards, YVAA (www.yvaawards.org), founded in 1990 in the Czech Republic and currently active in twelve countries across Central and Eastern Europe.

Artists aged 35 and under, working in any medium of contemporary art, are eligible to apply. This year, members of the BAZA jury are: Barbara Stehle (art critic, curator and professor, New York), Boyana Dzhikova (curator and gallerist), Kalina Tsoneva (cultural theorist and critic), Luchezar Boyadjiev (artist), and Teodora Kotseva (curator and gallerist). Deliberations will take place on the day of the exhibition opening, with the winner announced during the event.

The recipient of the 2024 BAZA Award is Tsvetomira Borisova. The award consists of a grant and an eight-week residency at Residency Unlimited – a New York-based platform that supports artists in building professional networks and actively engaging with the local scene.

The nominated artists for BAZA 2025 are:

Aaron Roth, whose practice engages with questions of desire, myths of nationalism and history, as well as economics and corruption;

Bilyana Tokmakchieva, whose work explores socio-political themes through painting, sculpture, video art, performance, and installation art;

Martian Tabakov, who creates interactive sound sculptures and site-specific sculptural installations;

Natalia Jordanova, whose artistic practice is a projection – a subjective synthesis and material proposition of what defines the present moment;

Nevelin Ivanov, who experiments in the fields of drawing and conceptual fashion;

Slava George, whose work examines topics related to psychology, anthropology, ethnography, human rights, collective rituals, and alchemy;

Todor Rabadzhyski, whose practice explores transformation, materiality, and the symbolic weight of power structures, merging traditional craft with conceptual inquiry.

The curator of BAZA 2025 is Marina Slavova.

The project is organized in collaboration with the Trust for Mutual Understanding and Residency Unlimited, New York, with the support of the Lachezar Tsotsorkov Foundation.