Sofia Underground

It was blissful to perform at the Sofia Underground Performance Art Festival 2026, curated by @synaesthesia.collective Thanks to everyone who came, shared the moment, and made it unforgettable. 📸 @borisvasssilev

IMGONNABEASTAR
Performance by ILDZHAN ISMETOV Photography by Boris Vasilev Performed at the Sofia Underground Performance Art Festival 2026
Curated by Synaesthesia Collective.

Grateful to @sofia.underground and @synaesthesia.collective for the opportunity to be part of a space where art still dares to ask uncomfortable questions. “Distorted Faces” was an attempt to materialize those moral distortions that contemporary society increasingly accepts as normal — disguised as necessity, success, or adaptation. Thank you to everyone who entered the installation not only as viewers, but as participants. Photos by @borisvasssilev

❤️‍🔥 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.

@_world.of.the.dead_ 🎶 @sofia.underground 🕷️ @synaesthesia.collective 🦇

Episode 4 of A Case for Libretto is tonight. For this edition we take a deep and rather eclectic dive into 29 years of Sofia Underground International Performance Art Festival — one of Bulgaria's longest running platforms for performance and radical art. We'll be introducing artists from past editions and talking about what's happening right now, on the festival floor in Sofia. Tonight you will hear works by Nikhil Chopra, Simon Whetham, Vladimir Vlaev, Sevnseal, Bahzad Sulaiman Backpullver, Boyan Avramov with Teeth of Divine, KMTR, KiNK, Jacek Sienkiewicz, trohi, The Science among others! This is also a bridge — tomorrow, Friday 24 April, Sofia Underground goes live on air. A three hour broadcast from OKI Krasno Selo in Sofia, streaming to Rotterdam via Radio Worm. Two cities, one frequency. 🎙 Hosted by Isul Kim 📅 Tonight — Thursday 24 April 20-21h CET / 21-22h EET 📻 radio.worm.org @sofia.underground @radio.worm This year's festival topic is Heartbreak and the gorgeous artwork is by @dianabunkin from @synaesthesia.collective