Five Sofia exhibitions to catch this autumn

Art is all around us, in one form or another,

provided we make time to notice it. Then there are the places devoted to keeping it in view: theatres, galleries, cinemas. We’re heading back into Sofia’s art spaces for a second autumn selection, with five exhibitions still open as October draws to a close. Different artists, different worlds, and five good reasons to stop, look and let your thoughts wander. Check each venue’s opening days before visiting.

Happiness as a Form of Resistance

Until 29 November, Vaska Emanouilova Gallery, part of Sofia City Art Gallery

The exhibition takes its cue from Simone de Beauvoir’s reflections on happiness in difficult times. Can it be right to be happy in a broken world? Does attending to your own happiness mean turning away from political reality? Against a backdrop of war, crisis and suffering,

happiness can become an uncomfortable question.

The curatorial premise draws on de Beauvoir’s exchanges with Albert Camus and the idea that authentic happiness can itself resist injustice and absurdity. Eleven Bulgarian artists take part, working across painting, video, objects and installation.

Future Landscape

Until 6 November, Credo Bonum Gallery

Nora Ampova marks a turning point in her painting with a connected series of canvases and sculptural objects. Gesture and the emotional weight of colour take the lead, with vivid hues applied in light, translucent layers.

For the first time, her paintings step confidently off the flat canvas

and onto three-dimensional surfaces. Installed at the centre of the gallery, they form spaces you can enter, becoming part of the painting while looking through its coloured, transparent elements. In Future Landscape, the human figure has disappeared from the image. The viewer takes its place.

Breath

Until 19 November, ONE Gallery

“At the very centre of movement, there is stillness.” Teresa Zikovska uses this thought to introduce Breath, her new solo exhibition. At its heart is a contemplation of the world and its ceaseless changes.

Light, movement, natural forces and the invisible traces

they leave behind become starting points for paintings in which an outward experience gradually turns inward. Zikovska gives those impressions form through her distinctive, expressive handling of paint.

Vera Nedkova and Kiril Tsonev: Encounters

21 October–20 November, Vera Nedkova House Museum

Vera Nedkova and Kiril Tsonev belong to the generation that brought a modern European sensibility into Bulgarian visual art in the 1930s. Their connection became

one of the period’s most significant artistic friendships.

What began as a colleague’s support for a young artist’s debut developed into an alliance between two painters whose talent and modern outlook helped change the course of Bulgarian painting.

Japanese Prints from the 18th to the 20th Century

Until 8 November, The Palace, National Gallery

The National Gallery’s Japanese collection, one of the most substantial in south-eastern Europe, traces

key movements and printmaking techniques across two centuries.

The works arrived through purchases, exhibitions in 1957 and 1963, the International Print Biennial in Varna, and donations from artists following their Bulgarian shows from the 1970s to the end of the 20th century. The exhibition forms part of the 37th Days of Japanese Culture in Bulgaria.

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