Unknown Gods
Performance
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16-04-2023
- In collaboration with: National Culture Fund of Bulgaria
- Location: Clearing Gallery, New York City
- When the memory box gets full we often invent and feel the need for rites and rituals to name those phases like the moon cycles. Thus representative fictions become active in the logic of structure and operations of bodies. We preserve the passage of life in different ways, sometimes it gets captured in images of a dream world, of strange mythology, that we as the creators often don't understand, we interpret.
Fabrication of dreams
Project
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15-02-2023 t/m 10-04-2023
- In collaboration with: forplay society
- Location: Forplay Society, Kochi
- The patches of fabrics re-tail the history of colonization nowadays. The act of deviation and hijacking of dreams along the lives of many, a new order to fabricate a better life elsewhere. In our work, we hear voices of labor and exploitation, telling forgotten (hi)stories. A fishnet of words and collective imaginations regaining new prospects and agency in the postcolonial context. Can the process of decolonization be subjected to our desire for common futures?
- https://forplay-society.org/
herbarium
Exhibition / presentation
From the shore to the Mudpool
Exhibition / presentation
Liminal recollection..between memory and reality
Exhibition / presentation
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11-07-2022 t/m 18-07-2022
- In collaboration with: DA Lab foundation
- Location: Depoo gallery, Sofia
- A fundamental principle of the hologram is "The part contains the whole and the whole is contained in the part". Michaela examines the hologram and hologram techniques beyond its well-known commercial application and how this means of expression is embodied and translated into the physical space.
- https://depoo.space/
Altered Voices
Exhibition / presentation
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16-06-2022 t/m 30-06-2022
- In collaboration with: CBK Rotterdam and National Culture Fund (NFC)
- Location: DOZA gallery, Sofia
- “Altered Voices” is a group show which revolves around the theme of damnatio memoriae – the ultimate act of “forgetting” in relation to collective memory. The artists in this exhibition explore instances of personal and historical memory through a diverse range of media that includes installations, video, sculpture, soundscapes, photographs and performance.
TERRY
Exhibition / presentation
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01-04-2022 t/m 14-04-2022
- In collaboration with: Maurice Suitela
- Location: Delfshaven, Rotterdam
- The window installation honors Terry's gay film club — a secret place which existed in the '80s at the same location, which now functions as a shared studio space known as Mrs. BOK in Rotterdam. Despite finding a price list offering various items for sale — from soft drinks and snacks to flavored condoms, we barely knew anything about the gay film club's existence. The short film is composed of film excerpts and other visual materials dating back from the '80s to the present.
TENT Online Cinema-The Bien und der Garten
Exhibition / presentation
I got here floating on a tin can
Exhibition / presentation
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05-10-2021 t/m 10-10-2021
- In collaboration with: City of Munich Department Art and Culture
- Location: Rosa Stern Space, Munich
- The double group exhibition named „I got here floating in a tin can“ was staged both in Sofia and Munich. The first chapter was at Æther Art Space, during Sofia Art Week's fourth edition „Future Oracles“, showing works by the team members of Rosa Stern Space. Accordingly the team of Æther Art Space will be guests in Munich with a group exhibition and a performance program presented the positions and concepts that shape the art space.
- http://rosastern.space/aether-art-space-rosa-stern-space
The Bien und der Garten
Project
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01-06-2021 t/m 27-09-2021
- In collaboration with: Amy Pickles and Bérénice Staiger
- Location:, Rotterdam
- The film "Der Bien und der Garten" follows the artist and beekeeper Bérénice Staiger, whose art and apiarist practices intertwine systems of care and attention. The camera oscillates between the choreographies of Bérénice, and fellow beekeeper Sophie Pauwels – observing, inspecting, maintaining, harvesting, almost as a self-reflection, these gestures also mimicking the actions of the bees in the hive.
- https://vimeo.com/678042044
The Pric/she is right – Next Balkan: Bulgarian Contemporary Art
Project
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15-01-2021 t/m 23-04-2021
- In collaboration with: National Culture Fund Bulgaria
- Location: Ostavinska gallerya, Belgrade
- Showing the film “Earth Rebels” - anthropological and artistic research into the indigenous Tzotzil carnival in San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, Mexico combined with the sacral rituals of kukeri in and Shiroka Laka, Rhodope mountains, Bulgaria. What might be the commonalities between those two cultures dating back before the Spanish and Ottoman invasions?
Digital Aesthetics
Exhibition / presentation
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23-10-2019 t/m 01-12-2019
- Location: +359Gallery, Sofia
- Digital Aesthetics group exhibition together with Dagmar Schürrer and Tor Jørgen van Eijk, curated by Irina Batkova. For the occasion of the exhibition, I revisited and adapted the work Cold Storage (2015) following the unconventional special properties of the former water tower now currently a gallery space.
- https://plus359gallery.com/en/2019/10/16/digital-aesthetics/
Digital Art Festival | Article17
Exhibition / presentation
Past-Present Utopian dream for a now(un)clear future
Exhibition / presentation
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19-09-2018 t/m 29-09-2018
- In collaboration with: Gaudenz B. Ruf Award
- Location: Æther Sofia, Sofia
- In Past-Present: Utopian dream for a nu(un)clear future, a solo exhibition at Æther, Michaela Lakova is showing a body of works related to the past and future of nuclear energy. Michaela's works artistically investigate issues of historical relevance in Chernobyl where the remnants of nuclear energetics, human activity and memories of the biggest nuclear disaster are still present and in parallel to the small Danube town of Belene where the desire for developing nuclear energy remains strong.
- http://ruf-award.org/gaudenz-b-ruf/beneficiaries/bp_221/
Memories of Slavutych
Residencies / exchange
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18-04-2018 t/m 13-05-2018
- In collaboration with: International Festival of Film and Urbanism “86” and METASITU
- Location: International Festival of Film and Urbanism “86”, Slavutych
- As part of its Urban Program, the International Festival of Film and Urbanism “86” had selected nine urbanists, architects and artists via an Open Call to spend four weeks in the town of Slavutych (Ukraine). During their stay, residents reflected on the historical development, as well as potential futures of the 14 districts that make up the city.The residency was curated by METASITU, directors of the Urban Program of the 5th Festival of Film and Urbanism “86”.
- http://www.86.org.ua/en/
Article17
Residencies / exchange
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01-08-2018 t/m 31-08-2018
- In collaboration with: x-tepmorary
- Location: Online, Berlin
- Online residency organized by Marenka Krasomil. Over a span of a month the artist is invited to propose ideas, develop a concept, open up a process while manipulating a web page. Published article by Curating the Contemporary: Please Play with Glitches in the System: Javier Lloret and Michaela Lakova on x-temporary.org
- https://x-temporary.org/
A manuscript of erasure
Exhibition / presentation
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17-07-2017 t/m 31-07-2017
- In collaboration with: Gaudenz B. Ruf Award
- Location: the fridge, Sofia
- video installation, text extracts by Audrey Samson and voice over by Patrícia Chaves
Art Meets Radical Openness (AMRO)
Exhibition / presentation
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25-05-2016 t/m 25-06-2016
- In collaboration with: Art Meets Radical Openness and Gaudenz B. Ruf Award
- Location: Kunstraum gallery, Linz
- AMRO is a biennial festival dedicated to art, hacktivism and Open Culture. I was invited to take part in the group exhibition at Kunstraum gallery with my interactive installation Delete?No, Wait!Rewind and the publication The Blue Print.
- https://www.radical-openness.org/en/archive
allow me to forget
Residencies / exchange
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01-07-2016 t/m 31-08-2016
- In collaboration with: CBK Rotterdam
- Location: Intercambiador ACART project space, Madrid
- group show at Quinta del Sordo and artist talk at Medialab-Prado, Madrid
What remains – Strategies of saving and deleting
Exhibition / presentation
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09-09-2015 t/m 27-11-2015
- In collaboration with: CBK Rotterdam and Kulturamt der Stadt Graz
- Location: esc media art laboratory, Graz
- What remains – strategies of saving and deleting — a group exhibition together with Linda Kronman & Andreas Zingerle (KAIRUS), Fränk Zimmer and Marloes de Valk.
- https://esc.mur.at/en/projekt/what-remains
Radical Networks
Workshop
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24-10-2015 t/m 26-10-2015
- In collaboration with: Eyebeam and Stimulation Fund
- Location: Radical Networks, Polytechnic School of Engineering, New York University, New York City
- a workshop and presentation of bibliotecha project together with André Castro and Lucia Dossin https://radicalnetworks.org/
- https://bibliotecha.info/
Pickle festival
Exhibition / presentation
Unlinked
Exhibition / presentation
Acknowledgments
Scholarship
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Van Veek Donner Foundation, Rotterdam
- 2013
Scholarship
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CBK Research and Development grant (R&D)
- 2015
Scholarship
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Municipality of Rotterdam
- 2017
Scholarship
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CBK Rotterdam (PPR grant)
- 2020
Scholarship
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Production grant from National Culture Fund (NFK), Bulgaria
- 2021
Pricing
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Gaudenz B. Ruf award for New Bulgarian Art
- 2018
Collection
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+359 gallery
- 2019, Sofia
