Kunstenaar - Art Office

ВграденаСянка/ VgradenaSianka - VgradenaSianka / ВграденаСянка (Embedded Shadow) is a ritual performance unfolding through possession and the summoning of beings that linger in the darkest corners of our psyche. Drawing from Bulgarian folklore surrounding samodivi and their abduction rituals, and the lore of womens' shadows embedded into structures, the work explores the body as a vessel caught between worlds. Suspended between disappearance and embodiment, selfhood and haunting. Through shadow theatre, vocal invocation, dissociative movement, and ritual actions, a silhouetted figure is overtaken by unseen presences, gradually materializing in a new dimension. Violent and gentle at once, the performance moves through discomfort, dysphoria, and transformation, tracing the moment when a body ceases to belong entirely to itself. The performance was first tested for AMEN collective on the 7th of February and for Roodkapje's Housewarming on the 28th of March This work is being developed for touring 2026-2027.

OREXIS - OREXIS is a new performance collaboration between artists Linh Luu and Magdalena Petrova, which debuted in March 2026 in Sofia during the Не-Клуб event by TREVOGA x Club PAVE, and had its second showcase on May 1 at WORM’s UBIK Theater during SPELL_LOCKET. The work will be developed for touring during 2026-2027. She reshuffles the room until the room begins to breathe. The forest answers with a body that does not fully belong to itself. Convulsions into becoming, behind a veil of skin, what steps through is half-born, half-stolen. By the end, you cannot tell who cast the spell and who became it.

SPELL_LOCKET - SPELL_LOCKET is a new performance series curated by Magdalena Petrova. The first edition took place on the 1st of May at UBIK Theater (WORM), Rotterdam. This curation invites you to step through the threshold into temporary realities, where performances are active portals to unknown worlds. Each work relies on its own logic, drawing the audience into spaces of shifting perceptions… and the certainty of what is real begins to dissolve. Rooted in practices of world-building and alternative subcultures, the series congregates works composed through the ways each artist weaves and uses space, sound, and movement. Dissecting themes of abjection, the monstrous-feminine, sensuality, and the subconscious within their many perspectives, the programme approaches the body as a ceremonial site of transformation, disturbance, and re-enchantment. The evening will unfold as a shifting composition of presences and atmospheres, where works will bleed into one another, resisting fixed borders. SPELL_LOCKET foregrounds voices of fem, queer, and BIPOC artists, whose works resist categorisation and who construct new dimensions in our world with their practices. The program emerges from a need to give space for performances that operate beyond rational thought and asks you to open your senses and give in. Artists: Juniper, Retla Gem, Pink Zombie, rbf.linh, k0priva

NEKROLOG - How many times have we died in this life? NEKROLOG is a ritual and interactive installation that invites audiences to expand on this deeply personal yet universally resonant question through a wallpaper of collective grief. This work is an invitation to create a site of obituaries, a place where past selves are honored and connected through the ceremonial acts of remembering, writing, and collecting. I utilize and share my own practices by offering candles, herbs and other ceremonial tools, with visitors. This final iteration of NEKROLOG is designed to intervene in public space as a temporal infrastructure of mourning, used to tour, inspire and give space to forgotten practices. The first stop of the NEKROLOG tour was presented during Sofia Art Week in Bulgaria, 20-25th of October, 2025 and was supported by CBK. Performers: Kristina Petrova, Alexandrina Zehtindzhieva

NEKROLOG iii 2025 - This rendition of NEKROLOG was performed in May 2025 at UBIK Theater, part of the series Salon of Queer Indoctrinations: Rituals. /// How many times have we died in this life? NEKROLOG is a ritual and installation that invites audiences to expand on this deeply personal yet universally resonant question through a wallpaper of collective grief. This work is an invitation to witness a site of obituaries, a place where past selves are honored and connected through the ceremonial act of remembering, writing, and collecting. The research positions grievance as a form of counter-mapping, reclaiming inner and collective geographies of the self. It pursues an embodied resistance to the symbolic and material displacements that shape marginalized bodies and spaces. The process is structured not as an endpoint but as an ongoing journey toward self-understanding and a gateway to self-acceptance through the lens of being queer, neurodivergent, post-communist, and as diaspora. Through poetic acts, liminal spaces are redeemed as sacred grounds for memory, resistance, and personal and collective repair. With NEKROLOG, the artist draws from the cultural and visual language of Bulgarian obituaries. Specifically, their excessive use in designated spots such as bus stops or doorways ritualizing loss in public space. The resulting collages would deteriorate with time, shaping wallpapers of collective grief. Magdalena borrows from this tradition to create an open museum of old demons and familiar faces, translating this form of expression into a constellation of obituaries, each a carrier for memory, ecology, and touch.

Thức Tỉnh 2025 - Thức Tỉnh is an audio-visual performance by artists Animistic Beliefs (Linh Luu & Mar Lalihatu) and Jeisson Drent. This work harnesses the spirituality of contemporary rave music and links it with the various heritages that the artists emerge from: Vietnamese-Chinese, Moluccan, and pre-Colombian. Integrating traditional instruments like the Tayronian ceramic whistle and the Tifa drum, the artists re-contextualize sound and build pathways between the ancestral and the present. Thức Tỉnh is a one-hour-long work that weaves together music with shadow puppetry, poetry, and masked choreographies. The performance speaks to issues of bi-cultural identity, queerness, migration, and belonging. For this performance, Linh Luu commissioned M. Petrova and R. Notosudirdjo to develop a shadow puppetry work to accompany a scene. Within this process, the two artists created and patented a modular fan-shaped shadow puppetry screen, using live shadows and projection mapping during the performance. The work was shown during Fiber Festival x The Rest is Noise at Muziekgebouw Amsterdam and during ReWire Festival in 2025.

П0rТ4л001 - П0rТ4л001 П0rТ4л001 is the first artifact in a series of sculptures created from tree trunks and branches found on the streets of Rotterdam. Through this series, Magdalena Petrova builds portals leading to unknown worlds, each a vessel for its own story. The work was presented in April, during Art Week Rotterdam, as part of the official opening of C3 Studios in Rotterdam-Zuid.

NEKROLOG 2025 - This rendition of NEKROLOG was shown in January 2025 in Groningen, during HYPERTROVE at Sign Project Space. ///How many times have we died in this life? NEKROLOG is a ritual and installation that invites audiences to expand on this deeply personal yet universally resonant question through a wallpaper of collective grief. This work is an invitation to witness a site of obituaries, a place where past selves are honored and connected through the ceremonial act of remembering, writing, and collecting. The research positions grievance as a form of counter-mapping, reclaiming inner and collective geographies of the self. It pursues an embodied resistance to the symbolic and material displacements that shape marginalized bodies and spaces. The process is structured not as an endpoint but as an ongoing journey toward self-understanding and a gateway to self-acceptance through the lens of being queer, neurodivergent, post-communist, and as diaspora. Through poetic acts, liminal spaces are redeemed as sacred grounds for memory, resistance, and personal and collective repair. With NEKROLOG, the artist draws from the cultural and visual language of Bulgarian obituaries. Specifically, their excessive use in designated spots such as bus stops or doorways ritualizing loss in public space. The resulting collages would deteriorate with time, shaping wallpapers of collective grief. Magdalena borrows from this tradition to create an open museum of old demons and familiar faces, translating this form of expression into a constellation of obituaries, each a carrier for memory, ecology, and touch.

SAMODIVA V: DOGTOOTH VIOLET - For the second collaboration with Roodkapje, SAMODIVA temporarily joined the Anarchief. The Rotterdam collective opened its weeklong presentation introducing works by its founding members, Magdalena Petrova & Lui Surreal. The weeklong exhibition culminated during the celebration night on Friday, 29th November, cast under the spell of the dogtooth violet, (re)introducing a tantalizing lineup in a unique microcosm. SAMODIVA works at the cornerstone between club culture and interdisciplinary performance, crafting immersive experiences by infusing installation art with dynamic lineups. To foster connections and build community are focal points of the collective, as they push to the forefront experimental practices to challenge the traditional club format. The curation featured artists Magdalena Petrova, Mesin Slat, Lui Surreal, rbf.linh, and TiZi.

SOCIAFIT - SOCIAFIT is a live performance in collaboration with Rotterdam-based music artist VSCO. The performance was first shown at WORM Rotterdam in May 2024. At its core, the work stages an advertisement hell, where audiences are invited to purchase socially fitting personalities and escape the nightmare of self-discovery. Inspired by late 90s and early 2000s infomercials and tele-shopping ads that Magdalena grew up watching, the artists delve into the exaggerated world of advertisement culture, distorting and pushing its already dramatic nature to new heights through absurdist theater and live sound manipulations.

Viana Afoumou x SAMODIVA: RED HOODS - For the opening of her exhibition on January 19, 2024, artist Viana Afoumou invited Magdalena Petrova & Lui Surreal to expand the world of RED HOODS, developed during Viana’s residency at Roodkapje, Rotterdam. RED HOODS, or, “Mama always told me not to run in the dark” is a collective, Rotterdam-inspired, horror-twisted rendering of The Little Red Riding Hood. Reimagined into a hybrid horror show, it reflects on everyday fear through the dark cityscape of Rotterdam’s sounds, stories, places, visuals. For this project, SAMODIVA curated a night of live performances and led the set design in Roodkapje’s concert space, featuring a large-scale sculpture by Magdalena Petrova and Linh Luu. The lineup included artists RADVLAD, PL3TH0RA, BAUTISTA, J. Carmi, and Magdalena Petrova. During the evening, M. Petrova performed a durational piece with L. Wolstencroft, R. Ong, and R. Notosudirdjo, exploring the narrative of shifting the power dynamics between the Wolf and the Red Hood.

SAMODIVA II: Wishing Well - SAMODIVA II: Wishing Well was the second chapter of the Rotterdam-based collective, run by artists Magdalena Petrova and Lui Surreal. The celebration took place at POING Club on November 11, 2023. САМОДИВА (SAMODIVA) explores the cross-section between primordial ancestries and our digitally distorted realities and how they interact within club culture. Magdalena and Lui are dedicated to hosting ceremonies that weave together immersive installations, live music acts, performance art, DJ sets, and other artistic forms. It is of essence for the collective to push queer, BIPOC, and diaspora artists to the front. The goal for the floor plan is always to embrace the location’s maze-like environment, transforming it into a labyrinth. For this chapter, wishing became a central theme, creating space for magical manifestations to interact with the synchronicity between the dancefloor and the stage. This curation featured international artists MAAY (ARG/Berlin), Miguel Angeles (CA), alongside local artists Acidic Male, RADVLAD, Derozan, and blondewednesday.

SAMODIVA I: Sacred Groundz - SAMODIVA I: Sacred Groundz was the first chapter of the Rotterdam-based collective SAMODIVA, run by artists Magdalena Petrova and Lui Surreal. The ceremony took place at Rotterdam’s gem, POING Club, on July 7, 2023. SAMODIVA emerged through the desire to reimagine nightlife. Lui & Magdalena’s goal is to create otherworldly experiences and weave together diverse artistic forms like immersive installations, music acts, performance art, DJ sets, and more. Centering on the set design of each location, SAMODIVA aims to inspire feelings of bridging one dimension to another. Deepening POING's spatial potential to shift shapes not only as a club but as a temple, that hones artistic expression within Rotterdam's creative scene. The curation featured NL-based artists: Kexin Hao, rbf.linh, LazerGazer, XAKALELE, Magdalena Petrova, Lui Surreal, Noemi Calzavara, XIE3LLA, Derozan, LuZa Cult, PL3TH0RA, Marta Worner, and Sam Janssen.

teeth'n'wings - Teeth n wings - ‚teeth ‚n‘ wings‘ is an experimental tv series and installation piece initiated by Lili Ullrich. For this project 12 creatives from various artistic backgrounds come together, to create video artwork and installations that push acting, the art of character creation and applied anthropology to the forefront of contemporary art. The work is based on a merging of magic realism and reality tv. Synopsis: 𝔱𝔢𝔢𝔱𝔥 ‘𝔫‘ 𝔴𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰 is a delusional crash into the underground world of Rotterdam’s weirdest secret: two groups of mystical creatures – angels and vampires – are struggling to survive in late capitalism. A brave crew gives us first close ups of their survival techniques and manages to get them to speak about the glamour of immortality. They seem lost in their purposeless routines and stuck in their endless lives, until one day, on a rare occasion, the path of two opposites cross … The teeth'n'wings pilot episode premiered in February 2024 in WORM, Rotterdam

wet dreamzZz collective - wet dreamzZz is a performance collective influenced by magic realism, surrealism, immersivity and ritual. Magdalena Petrova, Ratri Notosudirdjo and Lili Ullrich create performances, installations and videos inspired by their dreams, subconscious worlds and liminal experiences. Through the use of alter egos, wet dreamzZz queers archetypes, deconstructing perceptions of femininity and exploring identity through gentle, mythical creatures. The collective was active from 2022-24, performing for various platforms such as Instrument Inventors in Den Haag, Gentle Them in SoundLightColor, Amsterdam and Labyrinth Festival at Worm, Rotterdam. The collective did a residency at Lemon House Press in Kassel, DE during summer 2023 to explore filmmaking.

Washing off my demons as the sea had washed off this jellyfish on my frisbee - This work was created in 2022 for the 5th edition of Sofia Art Week and performed in Doza Gallery, Sofia. The performance is a ritual that investigates grieving for a past self as a milestone deserving of a rite of passage. The process of mourning as healing, while navigating the chain reactions of trauma and emotional wounds of what we've left behind. This work follows a non-linear narrative of conversations between the artist’s past selves. The audience is welcomed to accompany the her into her internal world, straight into a gentle battlefield, where she faces old demons and familiar faces. Second performer: Anthony Lalev Music: Production & engineering - Christian Kostov "FAL$E" Additional production work: Gargata & Ivo Radev

Eat Other 2022 - Eat Other is a performance piece in collaboration with Ratri Notosudirdjo created and performed throughout 2022, part of VLIEGMODUS at Ijzerblok Studios, Rotterdam, METANOIA at POING and other events. The work explores sisterhood, the transition from girlhood to womanhood, monstrosity and shifting shapes.

Would you SWIM in y o g h u r t? - 'Would you SWIM in yoghurt' is a performance that follows the narrative of a Bulgarian poem. The choreography and soundscape draw a line between the symbols, cultural customs, and characters rooted in Bulgarian folklore. This work opens a dialogue on subjects surrounding grief and addiction through exploring this experimental theater and movement piece as a portal to different mental spaces such as procrastination, fragmentation, confusion, delusion, but also serenity, purity, and playfulness. The performance was created for Schoppen een Graven at Ijzerblok Studios in November 2020.

VRATI 2021 - VRATI is a participatory installation/ritual built upon symbols of Bulgarian folklore, rites of passage and non-verbal communication. The work was shown and experienced during the month-long exhibition Worlds between Words in MaMa, curated by R. Notosudirdjo This piece aims to create a chain of conversations using clay as a mediating platform. Together, we explore haptic communication, which is a branch that studies non-verbal communication through touch. This work is interested in centering haptic perception, specifically by using hands as the main tools for seeing and conversing. Touch is playfully explored as a transmitter of thoughts and emotions.

Magdalena Petrova

SAMODIVA

Washing off my demons as the sea had washed off this jellyfish on my frisbee

wetdreamzZz

VRATI, part of Worlds between Words exhibition

Magdalena Petrova NEKROLOG