GERY GEORGIEVA

When you have a distinct un-failing image of a feminine role model such as the Rose Queen … I am tempted to think not only about how I can pull it apart, but also how can I relate? Does this image exist in me somewhere as an ‘essential Bulgarian woman’? How can I insert myself into it and stretch it out? … Doing this role play … I am imagining that I am various women all at once, like a hallucinatory dream.

Gery Georgieva

Gery Georgieva (b. 1986, Varna, BG) studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, and completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools. She works across video, performance, and installation to inhabit the interstitial spaces of culture and selfhood. Situated between the legacies of post-socialist memory and Western art discourse, her practice stages hybrid encounters where national and personal narratives are continuously translated. Through performative gestures and musical alter egos, Georgieva negotiates identity as a site of mimicry and transformation — a space where Western pop and folk traditions collide and synthesise new meanings.

At the core of Georgieva’s practice is the diva — an ambivalent figure of strength, vulnerability, glamour, and resistance. Through lo-fi performances and video works merging Bulgarian folk culture with pop aesthetics, she examines how femininity is aestheticised and commercialised. Her embrace of amateurism creates space for authenticity, humour, and emotional vulnerability. Her body and voice become arenas of translation, echoing both belonging and estrangement. Humour and affect operate not as mere commentary but as strategies of ambivalence that disrupt stereotypes of taste, femininity, and cultural authenticity. In Georgieva’s work, identity is neither celebrated nor critiqued, but performed in its perpetual becoming. Georgieva lives and works in London/UK.

In 2024, Gery Georgieva presented Venus at Peacock Yard, London (GB), and the public commission Sirena Spider: Her Eternal Return for Konstväxlingar (Stockholm Metro, SE). Earlier solo projects include UWU Channel Radiance at Cubitt, London (GB, 2020); Mending a Broken World with Lenke Rothman at Sörmlands Museum, Nyköping (SE, 2019); At the Source at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (FR, 2018); and The Blushing Valley at Swimming Pool Projects, Sofia (BG, 2017). Since the early 2010s, she has exhibited and performed internationally in London (GB), Paris (FR), Sofia (BG), Nyköping (SE), and Stockholm (SE), among others. Georgieva was the recipient of the Frieze Film Commission (2015) and the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for New Bulgarian Art (2017). She studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, and completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools, London (GB).

На Чешмата [At the Source], unfolds as an immersive performance inhabiting the shifting terrain between folk ritual and pop spectacle, conflating the highly personal with the cultural. Within a stage environment resembling both an ethnographic museum and a nightclub, Gery Georgieva performs a lament inspired by Bulgarian folk song, gradually transforming from an icon of national tradition into a figure of exuberant release. Wearing an elaborate handmade costume (designed by Chopova Lowena)—part ceremonial dress, part pop assemblage—Georgieva moves through cycles of exposure and transformation. Flanked by video projections of family handycam footage of dancing, and by collages of textiles, women‘s torsos and rose petals. The performance’s soundtrack, developed with producers Endgame and Junior XL and featuring vocals from folk singer Maryana Angelova, merges Bulgarian lyrics, translated cover songs with reimagined anglophone pop, dissolving the borders between languages, identities, and desires.

Expanding from melancholy to euphoria, At the Source stages the body as both archive and amplifier of cultural tension, negotiating the space between authenticity and artifice, collectivity and self-display. In Georgieva’s hands, the folk lament becomes a vessel for contemporary longing—where ritual, spectacle, and sincerity converge in luminous contradiction.

Gery Georgieva, На Чешмата [At the Source], live performance with installation and sound, Block Universe Festival, Oval Space, London/UK, 2018. Commissioned by Block Universe with support by Outset Contemporary Art Fund.

НА ЧЕШМАТА [AT THE SOURCE]

BALKAN IDOL

In Balkan Idol, filmed between the decaying Buzludzha Monument and the Romantika Princess nightclub in Svilengrad/BG, Gery Georgieva weaves together the symbolic ruins of Bulgaria’s communist past and the glossy surfaces of its contemporary pop culture. Through the use of her own voice and body, she performs a choreography that alternates between sacred lament and seductive display, merging the traditional folk song Brala Moma Ruzha Tsvete with gestures drawn from Chalga—the popular post-socialist folk-pop music scene. By situating these two spaces side by side, the monumental site of ideology and the site of liberated nightlife, Georgieva constructs a visual and sonic dialogue between history and desire, decay and spectacle. Her DIY costume, part folk attire and part disco dress, mirrors this tension, transforming the artist’s body into a surface of negotiation between authenticity and artifice.

Georgieva reflects on belonging, representation, and the performance of cultural identity in a globalized world. Balkan Idol unfolds as a hybrid ritual, both homage and critique, revealing a “third space” where inherited symbols dissolve into new, fluid forms of meaning.

Gery Georgieva, Balkan Idol, HD video 4’ 5’’, Frieze Film & Random Acts, 2015.

SIRENA SPIDER: HER ETERNAL RETURN

Realized for the Stockholm metro, Sirena Spider: Her Eternal Return unfolds as a mythic apparition within an everyday passageway. Set against the faded architectures of seaside stages and deserted leisure spaces of the artist’s hometown of Varna, the work reimagines the siren as a hybrid figure, part woman, part spider, caught in a perpetual act of transformation. Her gestures oscillate between seduction, exhaustion, and renewal, mirroring the cyclical rhythms of movement and returning that structure, both myth and modern transit.

The shimmering costume, echoing the textures of water and web, amplifies her liminal presence as she weaves new connections between the human and the non-human, the sensual and the mechanical. Projected as a continuous loop, the video turns a moment of transit into a portal of suspended time, where desire, decay, and rebirth coexist in fragile balance.

Gery Georgieva, Sirena Spider: Her Eternal Return, HD video loop, 2’ 15’’, commissioned by Konstvaxlingar for the Stockholm metro system, 2024.

THE BLUSHING VALLEY

Filmed in Kazanlak, the heart of Bulgaria’s Rose Valley, The Blushing Valley stages a poetic confrontation between cultural identity, femininity, and the commodification of tradition. Appearing as a contemporary “Rose Queen,” Gery Georgieva reimagines the iconic figure of national celebration through performance, DIY costume, and gesture. Draped in hand stitched fabrics and gold chains, she moves between grace and irony, her presence both regal and self-aware. Set against a landscape of blooming roses, the work intertwines folklore and pop sensibility, transforming the pastoral scene into a site of spectacle and self-fashioning. The soundtrack, drawn from field recordings of the Rose Queen coronation, carries a ceremonial, almost cinematic quality that amplifies the sensuality and artificiality of the image, and evokes the tension between authenticity and display.

Through this oscillation between devotion and parody, The Blushing Valley exposes the ways redefined. It is both homage and critique—a vivid reflection on how identity is performed, marketed, and remembered in the global age.

Gery Georgieva, The Blushing Valley, HD video with stereo sound, 4’, filmed in Kazanlak, Bulgaria, 2017.

SOLO ROMANTIKA

In her work Solo Romantika, Gery Georgieva draws on the aesthetics of the Balkan pop diva to reveal how femininity, desire, and emotion are staged and circulated within mass culture. Combining video, performance, and stage design, the work merges melancholy with empowerment and performance with a sentimental Bulgarian folk ballad is sung acapaella, layered in three voices. Georgieva moves between sincerity and parody, diva and outsider, seduction and exhaustion. Behind shimmering metallic curtains borrowed from pop diva shows the performance video presents the artist herself — her face covered in glitter, and pigment, oscillating between glamour and disintegration.

The installation’s deliberately improvised and fragile theatricality undermines the glossy surface of pop performance, exposing the tension between artifice and authenticity. By embodying the language of show business and Balkan pop-folk culture, Georgieva transforms the codes of stardom and self-display into a space of vulnerability and reflection. Both seductive and unsettling, Solo Romantika unfolds as a raw, poetic study of cultural nostalgia and the performance of femininity.

Gery Georgieva, Solo Romantika, video performance, installation view, Enclave Deptford, London/UK, 2015.

SOLO (BUBBLES)

The title of the video work Solo refers both to singing alone, a cappella, and to being alone. Filmed from a bird’s-eye view, Gery Georgieva’s face appears submerged beneath the water of a bathtub. Eyes closed, she exhales — bubbles rise and distort the still image before fading away. Locked into an endless loop, the face remains in the frame but never emerges. Only the bubbling is heard — a sound that replaces the voice.

Georgieva stages a self-portrait that oscillates between humour and unease, intimacy and dissolution. The work alludes to a state of withdrawal in which body and voice, image and breath, no longer align — a subtle shift on the level of representation and perception. The water functions as a surface of projection on which the image of the self is both formed and undone. Like a contemporary Ophelia, the artist lingers in quiet melancholy, suspended between presence and disappearance. In the endless loop, the act of exhaling turns into a gesture of self-erasure — a reflection on vulnerability, control, and the fragility of one’s own image.

Gery Georgieva, Solo (Bubbles), HD video, 3’40”, 16:9, 2015.

ORIGINAL CHEESE

In her multimedia installation Original Cheese, Gery Georgieva explores showbiz culture and the power structures behind the media’s portrayal of women, exposing the myths of originality and authenticity that continue to shape popular culture. The title itself, associated with kitsch, sentimentality, and imitation, sets the tone for the work and points to Georgieva’s interest in how authenticity is staged, appropriated, and endlessly reproduced. Georgieva leads the viewer behind the scenes of female self-presentation. The installation resembles a low-fi film set and assemblage, marked by a deliberate DIY aesthetic and fragile improvisation.

In the performance videos, the artist appears alone in her studio, experimenting with accents and roles within the aesthetic of the ‘to-camera’ interview, oscillating between embarrassment and revelation. The dotted marks on her hands allude both to motion-capture technology and to a sense of handmade immediacy. Drawing from the visual and narrative languages of show business, advertising, and global superstardom, Georgieva embodies female archetypes that shift between manipulation, desire, and control. The recurring image of the rose, rooted in both English and Bulgarian culture, functions as a symbol of femininity, tenderness, and commodification.

Through karaoke, Georgieva reinterprets Rizzo’s song from Grease — the voice of a teenage girl, mature beyond her years, trapped in her image and in the swirl of gossip —transforming it into a moment of self-aware vulnerability. Interwoven imagery of train tracks and flight paths evokes restlessness and transience, connecting the dream of showbiz glamour with the fragility of digital existence. Moving between enactment and reflection, Original Cheese unfolds as both confession and satire—a raw, poetic study of how images of femininity are staged, mediated, and reclaimed.

Gery Georgieva, Original Chees, installation view, Andor Gallery, 2016.

RHODOPSKA BEYONCÉ (AUTOETHNOGRAPHY II)

Filmed in the snow-covered landscapes of the Rhodope Mountains in southern Bulgaria, Rhodopska Beyoncé (Autoethnography II) reimagines the global icon through a local lens. Dressed in traditional Rhodope costume, Gery Georgieva performs her own rendition of the Single Ladies dance routine in the silent stillness of the landscape. Combining pop spectacle with ethnographic ritual through her subtle gestures and poses, she translates the aesthetics of music video into a meditation on identity. The juxtaposition of folkloric attire and pop-cultural attitude creates a friction between the inherited and the aspirational, the authentic and the performative. Against the stillness and silence of the mountain backdrop, Georgieva’s movements oscillate between confidence and restraint, parody and devotion, suggesting both empowerment and exhaustion within the circulation of global femininity.

In this work, the artist performs herself as both subject and ethnographer — observing, inhabiting, and reframing the cultural codes that shape how identity is seen and sold. Rhodopska Beyoncé becomes both homage and critique, a humorous yet poignant self-portrait set between worlds.

Gery Georgieva, Rhodopska Beyoncé (Autoethnography II), HD video, 4’, 16:9, 2013.

UWU CHANNEL RADIANCE

Conceived as a hyper-saturated broadcast from an imagined future, UWU Channel Radiance unfolds within the glittering architectures of digital femininity. In this video installation, Gery Georgieva stages herself as an avatar-host, a prophetic newsreader transmitting from a hybrid realm between the influencer economy and devotional ritual. Bathed in pastel light and cosmetic glow, her gestures oscillate between self-presentation and self-erasure, mirroring the performative pressures of online visibility. Drawing from the aesthetics of live streaming, ASMR, and Balkan pop spectacle, the work merges intimacy and excess into a single visual language. The artist’s body becomes both object and transmitter — a radiant surface reflecting the economies of desire that shape identity in networked culture.

Through layers of synthetic shimmer and sonic softness, Georgieva transforms the logic of attention into a choreography of care and collapse. Projected as a continuous loop, UWU Channel Radiance suspends the viewer in an endless scroll of allure, exhaustion, and rebirth..

Gery Georgieva, UWU Channel Radiance, HD video installation, 6’ 20’’, 2023.