Artist Name: Krasimira Butseva
Residency Dates: July 2023 & August 2024
Born: 1994
Hometown: Asenovgrad, Bulgaria
Lives & Works: Sofia, Bulgaria & London, UK
URL: www.krasimirabutseva.co.uk | Instagram: @krasimirabutseva
Education:
2016-2017 | MA in Photography, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom
2013-2016 | BA in Photography, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Bio/Statement:

Krasimira Butseva is the recipient of the 2022 BAZA/Young Visual Artist Award for emerging visual artists in Bulgaria.

Krasimira Butseva is a visual artist, researcher and writer based in both Sofia and London. She is a senior lecturer at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. In 2024, Krasimira, alongside her collaborators Julian Chehirian & Lilia Topouzova were selected to represent Bulgaria at the 60th Venice Art Biennale, with curator Vasil Vladimirov. In 2022 she won the BAZA Award for contemporary art, and in 2021 she was a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude.

In her creative and academic work, she explores political violence, traumatic memory, and the official and unofficial history of Bulgaria. Krasimira employs video, photography, installation, sound and text, in the recontextualization of difficult and erased histories in relation to the communist regime. Her works are both part of gallery spaces and academic journals.

Krasimira has showed her work in many solo and group exhibitions including: The Neighbours at the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 60th Art Venice Biennale, Italy (2024), The Neighbours at the University of Toronto, Canada (2023) and at Princeton University, USA (2023), Shimmer of a Possibility at KO-OP Art Space (2023), Needles in a Haystack at the National Gallery of Bulgaria (2023), Camera obscura at Voloshyn Gallery, Kiev, Ukraine (2023), Beyond all reason. In the mirror of surreal times at Structura Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria (2023), The Neighbours: Forms of Trauma, Sofia City Art Gallery & Studio the neighbours (2022); Are we communists?, GARA space (2022); Frequencies of Trauma, Structura Gallery (2022); History is in the Present, Singer-Zahariev Foundation (2021); History in Between, Regional History Museum of Sofia (2020); F O R M, Seen Fifteen Gallery (2020); Photography & Sculpture – AMP Studios, South Bermondsey Art Trail (2019); Balkan Mine, EEP Berlin (2019); Brighton Photo Fringe, Phoenix Gallery (2018); Archives as Medium, Four Corners Gallery (2017); Uncertain States/Emergence, Photomonth London, Mile End Art Pavilion (2016); Pingyao International Photography Festival, China (2016).

Support: Krasimira Butseva’s residency is made possible with support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.