ICA-Sofia traces its origins to a circle of professionals established in the very late 1980s and early 1990s in Sofia, Bulgaria. The group started as friends and colleagues who shared many priorities and values in art and life (to a degree), living in the same city, experiencing the same chaotic situation, transformation with no end, and being isolated in Sofia, and yet craving to for the city to take an active part in the larger world.
As such, ICA-Sofia was founded informally in 1992 and formally registered as a not-for-profit association of artists, curators and researchers in 1995. For the larger part of its existence, ICA-Sofia has been functioned as a project-based institution. Between 2003 and 2006, ICA-Sofia used and managed the exhibition space of the previously existing commercial gallery Ata-Ray. Since 2009 ICA-Sofia has had its own permanent exhibition space provided free of charge by one of its members, Nedko Solakov.
ICA-Sofia has rarely had a space of its own but has always had its own agenda–to open up the Sofia and Bulgarian art scene in a reciprocal and multidirectional exchange with the rest of the world, as well as with its local audience; to promote Bulgarian art and artists; to function as a substitute for the disappearing and or the never fully constructed or renewed infrastructure for contemporary art in Bulgaria; and always, against all odds, to exist communally as a group, that can integrate into the life of the city as much as possible.
ICA-Sofia started out (and still functions as such) as a community, as a kind of a ‘collective action’ project with a shared agenda for self-defense (against the changing world and collapsing infrastructure for art), for intervention in a society that did not seem to have a clear idea of where it was coming from, nor for where it was headed to. ICA-Sofia has always functioned in collaboration with partners from both the country and abroad.
ICA Sofia’s role and function as a substitute for the missing state, and public and/or private infrastructure of art has always been extremely crucial for the health of the art scene in Sofia; even more so whenever and wherever links to the international art world are concerned. However, from today’s point of view (provided there is little change for the better in Sofia as far as art infrastructure is concerned), it seems that the most valuable function that ICA-Sofia has been able to perform is to uphold an open, professional, international and yet locally aware contemporary art discourse. Its main priority in its program are its exhibition activities, through which it presents the work of artists from both local and international arenas.
ICA-Sofia presents approximately 6 exhibitions each year.
Most outstanding projects in recent years:
“Visual Seminar” (2003–2006)–multidisciplinary project with debates, artistic and research projects, interventions in the city environment, publications, guest program with participation of Gelitin, Sean Snyder, Roman Ondak, Olaf Nicolai, Birgit Brenner among others.
“Our 20 Years” (May–June 2010)–exhibition of the most comprehensive archive of contemporary art in Bulgaria since 1985 ever exhibited in public.
“Art of Urban Intervention”–since 2009 (collaboration), a long term project with hit-and-run workshops, artistic residencies, publications.
Exhibitions by Dan Perjovschi and Massimo Bartolini.
Correlating to the exhibition activities is ICA Sofia’s series of public events and research programmes that include, publications; public lectures and other educational events such as debates, seminars, workshops; facilitating research and other kinds of visits of professional colleagues from abroad; facilitating the promotion of Bulgarian artists in and out of the country; providing professional know-how and career building expertise to those younger artists who needed it; compensating for the lack of good up to date artistic education and many others.
ICA-Sofia has exhibition space of approximately 60 m2 and office space of 20 m2.
