Artist name: Aleksandra Chaushova
Dates of residency: February – March 2016
Born: 1985
Hometown: Sofia, Bulgaria
Lives and works: Brussels, Belgium
URL: http://chaushova.blogspot.be/
Education: PhD in art and art sciences, École nationale supérieure des arts visuels de La Cambre (ENCAV) in collaboration with the Free University of Brussels, 2012-2017; guest student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (autumn of 2012), invited by the artist Lucy McKenzie; MFA and BFA Academy of Fine Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria (2009 and 2007)
Bio/ Statement:
Chaushova’s practice is marked by strategies of creating history at the border between history and fiction. She employs a wide range of historical propaganda-strategies resulting in dream-like drawings where fantasy and reality coexist.
“At first glance, Aleksandra Chaushova’s drawings appear to rival photographs; in their portrayals, in their scenic nature but above all, because they appear like illustrations in which narrative can only be reconstructed in fractions. They refer to a reality, a historical facticity, where the border between true and untrue, fiction and fact have systematically been destabilised by a political regime. It is at exactly this point that Chaushova locates her work, in that she blends official, retouched, unspoken, falsified, manipulated or censored history with memories of the same past on the part of her family or friends and with portrayals of the subconscious.”
Dirk Snauwaert, Wiels, Brussels
Aleksandra is the recipient for the 2015 BAZA Award for Contemporary Art Competition. This award is aimed at artists aged 35 and under and grants a travel allowance in New York City.
Aleksandra Chaushova made her debut in 2003 with the book “Bzzz-z-z-z” (poems and dreams), which won a subsidy from the Soros Center for Cultural Policies and the Prohelvetia Arts Council of Switzerland. Since then, she has taken part in numerous exhibitions. In 2014, she participated in a show at the Art Center Hugo Voeten, Herentals, curated by Vessela Nozharova. In 2013 , with ReSiDuE, WIELS Center for Contemporary Art, curated by Dirk Snauwaert und Agata Jastrzabek, Brussels. In 2015 her work was featured in the BAZA Award exhibition at the Sofia City Art Gallery (Bulgaria) and in the Faber-Castell International Drawing Award at the Neues Museum (Nuremberg, Germany. In 2016, Chaushova will have 3 solo shows at La Centrale Lab in Brussels, the Institute for Contemporary Art Sofia, and at Lokaal01, Antwerp.
Select Permanent Collections:
Hugo Voeten Collection, Vennen , Belgium
Collection Olivier Gevart
Support: Aleksandra Chaushova’s residency is made possible with support from The Trust for Mutual Understanding.
