THE FEDERATION OF MINOR PRACTICES
Artists:
Gery Georgieva, Maria Nalbantova, Rayna Teneva, Veneta Androva
Curator:
Martina Yordanova
Commissioner:
Dessislava Dimova
The Bulgarian Pavilion, under the title ‘The Federation of Minor Practices’ is conceived as the headquarters of a fictional research lab operating within a care oriented political imagination. Positioned ahead of the present, the Pavilion looks back at the early 21st century as the moment when the conditions for this future first became visible.
The near past of this formation is presented through four films:
Gery Georgieva’s ‘UWU Channel Radiance’ mobilises digital myth and prophecy to question regimes of identity, pleasure, and mediated truth.
Maria Nalbantova’s ongoing work at the Dragoman Marsh in Bulgaria unfolds as a long term practice of ecological care, combining artistic research, environmental maintenance, and the recording of local human and non human narratives.
Rayna Teneva’s ‘Geography Is Destiny’ traces the entanglement of labour, care, and violence in the Rose Valley surrounding the Bulgarian town of Kazanluk, where rose harvesting coexists with arms production.
Veneta Androva’s ‘Spray and Pray’ examines infrastructures of disinformation through the ecology of mushroom websites and algorithmic systems.
Conceived as an interactive environment based on a computer game, it gathers signals from the four films and activates them through play as a practice of collective orientation.
From the perspective of an imagined future, the Pavilion appears as an early laboratory of formation, where shared acts of attention, care, and play began to assemble a post sovereign political imagination.
Gery Georgieva (b. 1986 in Varna, Bulgaria) is а multimedia artist who lives and works in London. Her practice encompasses video, performance, music, installation and sculpture. She repeatedly stages herself as a culturally migrational diva. Through improvisation and self-staging, she examines how cultural identity is configured, interrogating media conventions, commercial gender roles and where they collide with ideas of nationhood. Her films have been broadcast on Channel 4 Uk and scbreend Georgieva was the recipient of the Frieze Film Commission (2015) and the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for New Bulgarian Art (2017). She studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, and completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools, London (GB).
Maria Nalbantova (b. 1990 in Sofia, Bulgaria) is a visual artist working across mixed media and various techniques, including sculpture, DIY biomaterials, video, and drawing. She explores the relationships between human society and its environment by constructing speculative realities in which collected oral histories, archival materials, and interdisciplinary research intertwine with imagination and contemporary mythologies. Her work focuses on notions of coexistence, care, and responsibility. Among her participations are: Silk Road: Artists’ Rendezvous – International Artists’ Silk Road Field Residency (2025), China; viennacontemporary (2024) with Sarieva Gallery, Vienna, Austria; the Art Encounters Biennial (2023), Timișoara, Romania; Manifesta 14 (2022), Pristina, Kosovo and at the Center for Narrative Practices by invitation of OGMS Gallery; Residency Unlimited (2022), New York, as a recipient of the Baza Award (2020); as well as the International Summer Academy (2021), Salzburg, Austria.
Rayna Teneva (b.1986 in Kazanlak, Bulgaria) is an artist working between Sofia and Vienna. Reflecting on memory as a site of tension and continious renegotiation between the personal and the political, Teneva creates works that unfold in cinematic, installation, or performative formats. Frequently rooted in the vulnerable and the overlooked, her projects open up a space for collective reflection within the speculative field between the documentary and the fictional. Rayna Teneva graduated in Media Art from the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe, Germany, and in Photography from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts (NATFA) in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2025, she was awarded the Balkan Contemporary Art Prize, initiated by the Singer–Zahariev Foundation, within the framework of BUNA Contemporary Art Forum. Rayna has received scholarships from the Ursula Blickle Foundation (DokKa Film Festival 2024), the Bulgarian Fund for Women (2023), Zeitbild Lab, HfG Karlsruhe (2019–2022), and the Heinrich Hertz Society (2018).
Veneta Androva (b. 1985 in Sofia, Bulgaria) is a visual artist living and working between Berlin and Sofia. Her practice centers on moving image and installation and is developed through research-based artistic approaches. Working across CGI-based moving image, multi-channel video, and spatial formats, she examines how contemporary realities are shaped by technological systems, mediated information, and structures of power. Androva studied Fine Arts at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, as well as Philosophy and Art History at Humboldt University in Berlin, and completed a study period in moving image at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Her film AIVA received the Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (2021) in the category Computer Animation, as well as the Golden Horseman for Animated Film and the LUCA Gender Diversity Award at Filmfest Dresden. Her earlier film From My Desert was nominated for the German Short Film Award (2020) and received the Critics’ Jury Award at the 25FPS International Experimental Film and Video Festival.
Martina Yordanova (b.1985 in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria) is currently curator at The National Gallery of Bulgaria, Founder and artistic director of IATRUS Residency Program in Veliko Tarnovo and founding member of Eastern Balkans Institute for Art and Architecture. Yordanova’s curatorial practice is consistently cross-disciplinary. At the National Gallery of Bulgaria she works at promoting the collection of the museum, developing partnerships with other art institutions, producing, and sharing knowledge around Bulgarian and international contemporary art. In 2023, she was a talks fellow at DAS (Dhaka Art Summit) in Bangladesh. In 2025, she participated in a curatorial residency program in Uzbekistan and was a guest curator at RAD ART Fair as part of RAD Curatorial.
The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia – In Minor Keys´, curated by Koyo Kouoh – will take place from Saturday, 9 May to Sunday, 22 November 2026 (preview 6, 7, 8 May).
The Pavilion of the Republic of Bulgaria at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is organized by the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria. It is produced by the National Gallery, Sofia.
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