Sofia Underground

SOFIA UNDERGROUND DAY 3 AT OKI “KRASNO SELO” OPENING, 24 April Doors: 18:00 Start: 19:00 Main Hall Performances: Daniel Haas (BE), Ildzhan Ismetov (BG), Deej Fabyc (IE), Marta Lodola (IT) Off-Hall Performances: Emiliya Toncheva, Tatyana Yolinska & Operator 18 (BG), Alissar Almaleh (SY/DE), Maya Antova - Mayoto & Lilyana Dvoryanova (BG), Kasia Zarzycka (PL), Kelvin Atmadibrata (ID) Works shown on 24 - 25.04: Diana Bunkin (BG), Stoyan Petrov & Yana Goncheva (BG) Yuliia Shumilova (UA/BG), Kris Metodieva (BG), Mladen Yordanov (BG), Ira RZ (BG), Margarita Omar (LU/BG) & Bistra Velichkova (BG), Kalina Koleva (BG), Joana, Ivanova (BG), Yoana Zhecheva (BG), Sveta Atanasova (BG) We have decided that we do not want to pretend that change comes with a well-written festival text or complex concept. Structural changes require much more than grand conceptual gestures, and a well put together show which are usually left hanging in the air, until it is time for the next one. We want to focus on a feeling of profound disappointment with the world we live in. This is something we have been experiencing for years now, and which we believe everyone feels and works through in their own way. To this end, we have selected the best works from the open call and our own archive. Participants: Follow the program at synaesthesiacollective.art Design: Diana Bunkin Sofia Underground is realized with the financial support of Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, the Ministry of Culture Bulgaria, Austrian Cultural Forum, Culture Ireland and Live Art Ireland

❤️‍🔥 SOFIA UNDERGROUND DAY 4 AT OKI “KRASNO SELO”, OPENING, 24 April ❤️‍🔥 Doors: 17:00 Start: 18:00 Main Hall Performances: Lyuba Maznova (BG), Lauren Kelly (IE), Helene Ridderberg (DK/NL), Frances Mezzetti (IE) Off-Hall Performances: Yanko Velkov - Yanec (BG) Ivet Dimitrova (BG), Lyllie Rouvière (FR) & Stella Geppert (DE), Konstantin Dimitrov (BG) Works shown on 24 - 25.04: Diana Bunkin (BG), Stoyan Petrov & Yana Goncheva (BG) Yuliia Shumilova (UA/BG), Kris Metodieva (BG), Mladen Yordanov (BG), Ira RZ (BG), Margarita Omar (LU/BG) & Bistra Velichkova (BG), Kalina Koleva (BG), Joana, Ivanova (BG), Yoana Zhecheva (BG), Sveta Atanasova (BG) This year we have decided that we do not want to pretend that change comes with a well-written festival text or complex concept. Structural changes require much more than grand conceptual gestures, and a well put together show which are usually left hanging in the air, until it is time for the next one. We want to focus on a feeling of profound disappointment with the world we live in. This is something we have been experiencing for years now, and which we believe everyone feels and works through in their own way. To this end, we have selected the best works from the open call and our own archive. Follow the program at synaesthesiacollective.art Design: Diana Bunkin -------- Sofia Underground is realized with the financial support of Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, the Ministry of Culture Bulgaria, Austrian Cultural Forum, Culture Ireland and Live Art Ireland

TODAY MY DREAMS HAVE RUN AWAY GROUP SHOW (part of Sofia Underground 2026: heartbreak) April 22–24, 2026 Opening: Wednesday, April 22, 18:00 TODAY MY DREAMS HAVE RUN AWAY is the first of this year’s unpretentious exhibitions set during Sofia Underground, focusing on personal and political disappointments stemming from utopias, promises, expectations, love, and identity. We have decided that we do not want to pretend that change comes with a well-written festival text or complex concept. Structural changes require much more than grand conceptual gestures, and a well put together show which are usually left hanging in the air, until it is time for the next one. We want to focus on a feeling of profound disappointment with the world we live in. This is something we have been experiencing for years now, and which we believe everyone feels and works through in their own way. To this end, we have selected the best works from the open call and our own archive. Participants: Performances - Liu Xu (China), Sancha Meca Castro and Inês Maleiro (Portugal) Video works - Stefan Hristov (Germany/Bulgaria), Dan Li (China), Ildzhan Ismetov (Bulgaria), Kalina Efremova (Netherlands, Bulgaria) Follow the program at synaesthesiacollective.art Design: Diana Bunkin —— Sofia Underground is financially supported by Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria.

❤️‍🔥 DAY 4 at OKI “KRASNO SELO” UNDERGROUND with LYUBA MAZNOVA (BG) ❤️‍🔥 Lyuba Maznova (b. 1998, Vratsa) is a multidisciplinary artist working across installation, video, sound, code, and performance. Rooted in graphic design and shaped by queerness, their work is a refusal—of binaries, of silence, of isolation. Through a practice that is both defiant and intimate, Maznova explores identity, belonging, deviant desire, and the queer body. Their work unfolds within and against the constraints of Bulgarian society, carving out spaces for collective expression, care, and radical transformation. Art for them is not solitary—it is a collaborative and community-oriented act, a way to speak with, to, and for fellow weirdos, misfits, and queers who refuse to disappear. Their recent projects confront institutional erasure and the violence of normative time. NON-BINARY TIME, a site-specific installation shown at Bobbina Cultural Space (2024), unravels temporal expectations imposed on gendered bodies. The Heroineʼs Journey (Doza Gallery, 2022) reclaims the spiritual and material paths of feminine becoming, inspired by Maureen Murdock. These works, alongside ongoing collaborations like Attractions of a Feminine Kind (with Hungarian artist Csenge Olexa), form a growing constellation of queer resistance and joy. Maznova is one of the selected participants of School4Artists3 by the Institute for Contemporary Art, Sofia. They also participated in The Artist at Play (2024), and in a residency at the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia, for artists and scientists. Their work refuses to be polite or palatable—it is an offering, a challenge, and a love letter to those who live outside the frame. —— Sofia Underground is financially supported by Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria and Culture Ireland.

❤️‍🔥 DAYS 3 and 4 at OKI “KRASNO SELO” UNDERGROUND KRIS METODIEVA ❤️‍🔥 Kris Metodieva (b. 2004, Sofia) is a visual artist working with mixed media, digital processing, abstract painting and installation art. Her work focuses on metamorphosis, mirroring in relationships, the merging of humans with technology, death, comfort, pain, the sense of personhood and its dissolution. In 2023, she graduated from “St. Luke” High School for Applied Arts. She is now studying Cultural Studies at Sofia university. Currently she’s focusing on experimenting with different medias, textures and shapes, digital processing and graphic design inspired by esotericism and the balance of extremes. —— Sofia Underground is financially supported by Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria and Culture Ireland.

❤️‍🔥 DAY 4 at OKI “KRASNO SELO” UNDERGROUND LAUREN KELLY (IE) 25.04 ❤️‍🔥 Lauren Kelly is an award-winning Dublin-based visual artist working primarily in performance. Founder of the Performing Activism Collective, her practice blends activism and embodied performance to explore political realities, oppression, and women’s healthcare. Her work engages with historical and politcal contexts, including performances in civic and historic sites, where she revisits and retells narratives of resistance. Combining poetic and embodied storytelling, she connects personal, historical, and political experiences through collaborative and socially engaged processes. Her current work focuses on how systems of ideology, religion, and institutional power shape experiences of violence, resistance, and collective memory, with particular attention to the transformaton of belief systems into structures of authority. —— Sofia Underground is financially supported by Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria and Culture Ireland.

❤️‍🔥 DAYS 3 and 4 at OKI “KRASNO SELO” UNDERGROUND WITH KALINA KOLEVA (BG) 24.04 ❤️‍🔥 I am a printmaking student at the NAA in Sofia, Bulgaria . My work explores contemporary social themes through variations of forms, materials, and mediums. I approach art as an articulation driven by energy and perception. I like asking questions to provoke a personal response. This confrontation is an open space , a reflection, where time and matter overlap, encouraging a more active and critical engagement with both the artwork and the observer. —— Sofia Underground is financially supported by Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria.

❤️‍🔥 DAY 3 at OKI “KRASNO SELO” UNDERGROUND WITH KASIA ZARZYCKA (PL) 24.04 ❤️‍🔥 I am a director, writer and a performer. I was born and raised in Kraków, Poland. In May 2023, I graduated with honors from Harvard University, earning a degree in Theater, Dance and Media and Comparative Literature. During that time, I was awarded a fellowship from David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies to conduct field research in Chile and Peru on political narratives and the impact of collective memory on the stage representation of history in both countries. Then, with a grant from Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, I wrote and staged a thesis play under the supervision of Dr. Debra Levine and Tania Bruguera, which addressed the topic of post-memory in Poland and Chile, through the prism of personal narratives. I gained dramaturgical experience through internships at American Repertory Theater, Cambridge and The New Rep Theater, Watertown. During the pandemic, I returned to Poland and worked for a year as a production intern and then as social media manager at Komuna//Warszawa in Warsaw, immersing myself into Warsaw theater scene. In July 2025, I graduated from MA Performance Practices at ArtEZ University of the Arts (Arnhem, Netherlands), an artistic research program focused on the notion of the Body in Performance. During that time, I was awarded two artist residencies, in Toffia, Italy and Mompox, Colombia, which directed my practice towards socially engaged and political performance. Currently, my practice and research revolve around psychopolitics of fear. Focused on how language of fear is (mis)used to manipulate emotional response to topics ranging from immigration, military spending to sex education, I work with the horror genre as intrinsically tied to both fear and politics. I create performances based on the lived experiences and overheard stories, juxtaposing them with already existing literature, archival documents, and pop-culture. —— Sofia Underground is financially supported by Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria.

❤️‍🔥 DAYS 3 & 4 at OKI “KRASNO SELO” UNDERGROUND WITH DIANA BUNKIN (BG) 24 - 25.04 ❤️‍🔥 Diana Bunkin (b. 1999, Sofia) is a visual artist and graphic designer. She graduated woodcarving at St. Luke’s Sofia, Bulgaria and in 2022 – Graphic Design and Illustration at De Montfort Leicester. Her art focuses on personal trauma, the female experience, emotional crisis, childhood, generational trauma and mental illness. She is currently working on her own mixed media projects focusing on digital painting and photography, and as a designer. Since 2022 she has been a core part of Synaesthesia Collective as a designer, artist and organizer. As of 2023 she is a part of the organizing team of Sofia Underground International Performance Art Festival. She was recently nominated for the BAZA award 2024. She made her official debut with the exhibition „Surrender is the way back home“ in Serdika Gallery, 2023, curator Georgi P. Pavlov. She has participated in Sofia Underground 2023 Ascension (curated by Synaesthesia Collective), Daring to Defy the Status Quo 2023 DOZA/AETHER HAGUE (curated by Voin de Voin) and Exemplary Home (curated by Synaesthesia Collective). Her most recent project is the exhibition Get Out of My Room (curated by Georgi P. Pavlov) at Blenda Gallery, as well as Sofia Underground 2025 —— Sofia Underground is financially supported by Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria.

❤️‍🔥 DAY 3 at OKI “KRASNO SELO” UNDERGROUND WITH EMILIYA TONCHEVA, TATYANA YOLINSKA & OPERATOR 18 (BG) 24 - 25.04 ❤️‍🔥 Performing "Radical Romantics" Concept and text: Emiliya Toncheva Performer: Tatyana Yolinska Musical score: Operator 18 Emiliya Toncheva is an actress, dancer, and choreographer. She graduated from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, China, earning a degree in Acting on a full scholarship. Upon returning to Bulgaria, she furthered her education with a degree in Dance Theater from New Bulgarian University. In her authorial projects, Emiliya Toncheva explores the human striving for perfection and the inherently doomed attempts to create utopian societies that ultimately give way to dystopia. Tatyana Yolinska graduated from the National Academy of Dramatic Arts and Film in 2021, in the class of Ivaylo Hristov. She is active in theater, literature, and cinema. She is the author of the one-woman show “BURNOUT”, in which she also performed, as well as the short film “DISGUST”, where she served as screenwriter and director; the project received international recognition. In literature, she debuted with the short story collection “Trolley Chronicles with Shifted Pages”, which explores themes of memory, the urban environment, and fleeting human experiences through fragmented texts and poetic elements. She is also actively involved in translation and other stage projects, establishing herself as a multidisciplinary young artist. Operator 18 is a songwriter from Sofia. An alumni of the Computer Science department at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, he often explores the border between human and machine and includes experiments with granular synthesis and vocoder in his work. He often releases his recordings under private links or scattered across various pseudonyms — some of these releases include “Ангел” (Angel) and “Напиши ми есемес” (Send Me an SMS). He is currently preparing his debut album “Месо и машини” (Meat and Machines). —— Sofia Underground is financially supported by Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria.

❤️‍🔥 DAYS 3 & 4 at OKI “KRASNO SELO” UNDERGROUND WITH YOANA ZHECHEVA (BG) 24 - 25.04 ❤️‍🔥 Yoana Zhecheva (b.2003) is a visual artist based in Sofia and is currently finishing her studies at the National Academy of Art.Her practice investigates the fundamental question: what is a painting? By deconstructing the traditional canvas and reimagining it through installation, she blurs the boundary between painting and spatial intervention. Yoana draws much of her inspiration from the urban environment. Recently, during a working period in Valencia, she began developing a new body of work rooted in the city’s visual and social landscape. She was particularly struck by buildings wrapped in mesh (reminiscent of mosquito nets) still inhabited even while under construction. These surreal juxtapositions inform her interest in the quiet absurdities of city life. —— Sofia Underground is financially supported by Sofia Municipality - Calendar of Cultural Events, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and the Ministry of Culture in Bulgaria.

Sofia Underground Radio — Live Broadcast On the 24th of April, Sofia Underground International Performance Art Festival goes on air. From OKI Krasno Selo in Sofia, Viktoria Nikolova will open a three-hour live broadcast – a radio transmission rooted in the performances, conversations, and sounds of this year's festival edition. Artists' interviews, music played, and presence carried through the frequency to whoever is listening. There is something particular about live radio – the knowledge that somewhere, thousands of kilometres away, someone is sitting in the same moment as you. Not a recording, not a replay. The same breath, the same now. For three hours, Sofia and Rotterdam will share a frequency, and the underground will become audible beyond its walls. And yes – a worm has found its way underground. Radio Worm from Rotterdam joins as co-presenter, because apparently, the underground is exactly where worms belong. Sofia Underground Radio is a new broadcast project growing out of the festival – a first transmission and a beginning of many more. When: Day 3 - Friday 24 April / 20:00–23:00 Sofia / 19:00–22:00 CET 📍Where: OKI Krasno Selo, Sofia Tune in at: radio.worm.org Presented by Viktoria Nikolova in co-production with Sofia Underground Festival, Synaesthesia Collective and Radio Worm, Rotterdam.