The Federation of Minor Practices

Veneta Androva, Gery Georgieva, Maria Nalbantova and Rayna Teneva will represent the Republic of Bulgaria at the 61st Venice Biennale with the project The Federation of Minor Practices.  

Curator: Martina Yordanova 

Commissioner: Dessislava Dimova, National Gallery. 

The Federation of Minor Practices is conceived as the headquarters of a fictional research lab operating within a care oriented political imagination. Positioned ahead of the present, the Pavilion looks back at the early 21st century as the moment when the conditions for this future first became visible.

The near past of this formation is presented through four films which have been newly commissioned and reworked for the occasion: Gery Georgieva’s UWU Channel Radiance which mobilises digital myth and prophecy to question regimes of identity, pleasure, and mediated truth; Veneta Androva’s Spray and Pray, a work that examines infrastructures of disinformation through the ecology of mushroom websites and algorithmic systems; Rayna Teneva’s Geography Is Destiny is a new film which traces the entanglement of labour, care, and violence in the Rose Valley surrounding the Bulgarian town of Kazanluk, where rose harvesting coexists with arms production and Maria Nalbantova’s ongoing work at the Dragoman Marsh in Bulgaria unfolds as a long term practice of ecological care, combining artistic research, environmental maintenance, and the recording of local human and non human narratives.

Conceived as an interactive environment based on a computer game, The Federation of Minor Practices gathers signals from the four films and activates them through play as a practice of collective orientation. From the perspective of an imagined future, the Pavilion appears as an early laboratory of formation, where shared  acts of attention, care, and play began to assemble a post sovereign political imagination.

Veneta Androva (b. 1985 in Sofia, Bulgaria) is a visual artist living and working between Berlin and Sofia. Working across CGI-based moving image, multi-channel video, and spatial formats, she examines how contemporary realities are shaped by technological systems, mediated information, and structures of power. Androva studied Fine Arts at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, as well as Philosophy and Art History at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Gery Georgieva (b. 1986 in Varna, Bulgaria) is а multimedia artist who lives and works in London. Her  practice encompasses video, performance, music, installation and sculpture.  Through improvisation and self-staging, she examines how cultural identity is configured, interrogating media conventions, commercial gender roles and where they collide with ideas of nationhood. She studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, and completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools, London (GB).

Maria Nalbantova (b. 1990 in Sofia, Bulgaria)  is a visual artist working across mixed media and various techniques, including sculpture, DIY biomaterials, video, and drawing. She explores the relationships between human society and its environment, focusing on notions of coexistence, care, and responsibility. She studied at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia and has participated in  Silk Road: Artists’ Rendezvous—International Artists’ Silk Road Field Residency (2025), China; Residency Unlimited (2022), New York, as well as the International Summer Academy (2021), Salzburg, Austria.

Rayna Teneva (b.1986 in Kazanlak, Bulgaria) is an artist working between Sofia and Vienna. Teneva creates works that unfold in cinematic, installation, or performative formats. Frequently rooted in the vulnerable and the overlooked, her projects open up a space for collective reflection within the speculative field between the documentary and the fictional. Rayna Teneva graduated in Media Art from the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe, Germany, and in Photography from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts (NATFA) in Sofia, Bulgaria. 

Martina Yordanova (b.1985 in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria) is currently curator at The National Gallery, Sofia, Founder and artistic director of IATRUS Residency Program in Veliko Tarnovo and founding member of Eastern Balkans Institute for Art and Architecture. At the National Gallery she works at developing partnerships, producing, and sharing knowledge around Bulgarian and international contemporary art.  

Credits: Curator: Martina Yordanova / Commissioner: Dessislava Dimova, National Gallery / Exhibition Design: Studio Gabbro / Graphic Design: Nikol Decheva / Production coordinator: Natalia Todorova Lenz / Production company: Studio 200% 

The Pavilion of the Republic of Bulgaria at the 61st International Art Exhibition—the Venice Biennale is organised by the National Gallery, Sofia with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria.

Opening times: May 9 to September 27: 11am–7pm / September 29 to November 22: 10am–6pm. Closed on Tuesdays.

Press enquires: Studio Nicola Jeffs, Nicola Jeffs and Siobhan Scott, nj@nicolajeffs.com / ss@nicolajeffs.com