Boryana Rossa
Boryana Rossa PhD (b. Sofia, Bulgaria, 1972) work is centered around technology, body, and gender and the question of how our identities are shaped by scientific knowledge. She is an interdisciplinary artist and curator who works in the fields of electronic arts, film, video, performance, and photography. She is interested in the fusion of fields of knowledge (art and science) and in transcultural practices.
Her recent artistic and theoretical projects are focused on reproductive biotechnologies and their predecessors in mythological stories about conception, pregnancy, and care. Other trajectories in her work are the historical and contemporary moments of social and political transformations, hybrid identities, and the creation of “chimeras” both visual and curatorial.
Rossa applies cyberfeminist and queer prism to her artistic work, informed not only by Western philosophy but also by philosophy and cultural studies coming from the Southeastern part of Europe (the Balkans), the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and studies of Antiquity (within the geographic span of Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East, and North Africa). By engaging with ideas from these regions, quite often classified as marginal or peripheral in the context of Europe and the Western world, she aims to reveal their importance in the formation of knowledge internationally.
Most of Rossa’s works have been shown internationally at venues such as 1st and 5th Moscow Biennial for Contemporary Art; Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, NY and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art (MUMOK) Vienna; Kunstwerke and Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; Stedeljik Museum Bouwkeet, Amsterdam; Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona and Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, Zwitzerland; Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw; 1 and 5th Thessaloniki Biennial, Greece; Museet for Samtidskunst Roskilde, Denmark; Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMCA), Sofia; Coreana Museum, Seoul; National Gallery of Fine Arts, Sofia; Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn, Estonia; Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia.
In 2004 together with artist and filmmaker Oleg Mavromatti, Rossa established UTRAFUTURO–-an international group of artists engaged with issues of technology, science, and their social implications. Works by ULTRAFUTURO have been included in the Biennial for Electronic Art, Perth (BEAP) and shown at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technologies (FACT), Liverpool; Waag Society, Amsterdam; Society for Art and Technology (SAT), Montreal, Laznia Center for Contemporary Art and Instytut Sztuki Wyspa, Gdansk, Poland; Hangar, Barcelona, Spain etc. Rossa and Mavromatti performed also as ULTRAFUTURO in Trickster Theatre, Exit Art, NY between 2006-09.
In 2009 she curated the international bio-art show “Corpus Extremus (Life+), featuring work by artists who use bio- and media- technologies to investigate questions of life and death. This show has been a culmination of her curatorial work as one of the initiators of the Bioart Initiative (2007-2009) a collaborative research project between Rensselaer’s Arts Department and the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS), RPI, Troy, NY.
In 2012 Rossa finished her Ph.D. entitled “Post Cold-War Gender Performances. Cross-cultural examination of gender representations viewed through Soviet, Russian and Bulgarian film re-enactments,” in the Department of Arts, at Rensselaer, Troy, NY, and is currently working on a book that will be published in Bulgarian.
Since 2012 she is a co-director of Sofia Queer Forum (together with philosopher and activist Stanimir Panayotov), which is an annual art and theory event in Sofia, Bulgaria that looks at gender and sexuality intersectionally and as systems through which we value ourselves and the others around us.
In 2017, together with Dr. Heidi Hehnly (Biology, Syracuse University), Rossa initiated The Bio-Art Research Coalition of Syracuse: an international across-universities initiative at Syracuse University, where artists and scientists meet to share their research and initiate collaborations since 2017. In 2023 she established, together with Professor Douglas Barett the working group Posthumanities: Arts and Sciences, as part of the Bioinspired Institute at Syracuse University.
Her works are in numerous public and private collections among which are Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Bank-Group, National Gallery and Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria; Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece, and others. Her performances and videos have been included in international art archives such as the Performing Art Archive re.act.feminism and Transitland Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989-2009.
Rossa’s work has been published in books and exhibition catalogs about performance and gender such as Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, NY; Cyberfeminism Index, Inventory Press:LA; Gender Check, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien; Sexing the Border, Cambridge Scholar Publishers and in periodicals such as Frieze Magazine; Brooklyn Rail; New York Times; New Yorker; Animal, NY; Kunstforum International; n.paradoxa; WEAD Magazine; Moscow Art Magazine; Colta.ru; Kultura Weekly, Sofia etc.
She is a Professor at the Department of Film and Media Arts at the School of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse University, NY, and an artist in residency at Hehnly’s Lab, SU.
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