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Dimitrina Sevova

Independent curator, researcher, and artist born in Bulgaria, living in Zurich. She completed CuratorLab at Konstfack – University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden, holds a Master of Fine Arts from the National Academy of Art, Sofia, in the painting class of Prof. Andrey Daniel, and a MAS Curating from the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts of the University of the Arts ZHdK, Zurich.

Her approach as a curator is research-oriented and involves a-disciplinary references, reflections and interventions across contexts, spaces and media, with a specific focus on group and collective exhibition-making that operates as an ecology of re-singularization in practices of dis-play, which presuppose co-existence. Her main interests lie in the (un)relation between representational and non-representational aesthetic forms, between languages, images and objects in their forms of displacement in the translation processes by speculative aesthetic strategies. Her curatorial approach is based on alien phenomenology and positive estrangement, and interrogates how technological dispositives and their apparatuses relate to the politics of difference and reality as a domain independent from the subject.

Runs, with Alan Roth, the experimental platform for contemporary art Corner College in Zurich (2015-), which until 2018 was a physical exhibition space for experimental and contemporary art – a discursive, event-oriented platform in combination with group and thematic exhibitions like Cold. War. Hot. Stars. The Iron(y) Helmet of the Intellect in 2016, Spooky Action at a Distance (Artes Mechanicae and Witch's Cradle) in 2015 (curated in collaboration with Gabriel Gee), and personal exhibitions like Martina-Sofie Wildberger, Nicole Bachmann, Uriel Orlow and others. In 2002, founded with Alan Roth the critical collective for media art practice and reflection code flow (http://www.code-flow.net). As co-founder of the TED Gallery in Varna and the Center for Contemporary Art in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, she contributed to fostering practices and debates around digital culture, gender and politics in the 1990s.

In 1998, Dimitrina Sevova joined the team of the Art Today Association in Plovdiv, Bulgaria as a curator, and initiated and curated the international project Communication Front /project of electronic and media art and theory/ 1999-2001 (http://www.cfront.org). In 2001 she curated and organized, with Alain Kessi and for the Art Today Association as a partner of the medi@terra 2001 festival, the theoretical conference “All Museums Are Virtual” in Sofia as an accompanying event to the traveling micromuseum of medi@terra 2001 in Lavrion, Greece.

Her latest curatorial projects include a term as a guest curator at Kunsthof Zürich in 2013, during which she developed an a-disciplinary project consisting of a platform of irregular non-serial events, screenings, public readings, performances, talks, urban interventions and other ephemera, on the theme of Opportunities for Outdoor Play? Playgrounds – New Spaces of Liberty (The Question of Form), and curated, in cooperation with Christoph Brunner, the international public symposium The Diagrammatic Practice of the Micropolitical – the Spatio‐temporal Expression of Play between Power, Knowledge and the Aesthetics of Existence at ZHdK (forthcoming, 14/15/16 November 2013); a performance program for IPA Plaform for Young Performance Artists Istanbul 2013 Program: NEXT STEP; the group exhibition Creative Assemblages – When aesthetics meet the economy or what do they have in Common? at Siemens Sanat in Istanbul, 2013; Media-Scape Zagreb 2012 (Biennal for Time Based Art) under the title Tactical Topics - Topical Tactics, co-curated with Ingeborg Fülepp, Sibylle Hoessler, Iva Kovač, Işın Önol in Zagreb, 2012; Sinopale 4 (Sinop Biennale) under the title, Wisdom of Shadow: Art in the Era of Corrupted Information, co-curated with Işın Önol, Aslı Çetinkaya and Elke Falat in Sinop, Turkey in 2012; In Growing up Amid the Historical Mysteries of Proximity: Pros & Cons of Being Neighbours, a group exhibition with performances co-curated with Işın Önol at ITS-Z1, Belgrade, Serbia in 2012; Reality Manifestos – Can Reality Break Bricks?, a group show and public theoretical symposium at Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna; and Invisible City – Technologies of the Body, a collaborative research project and exhibition between three artists and two curators at Kunstverein Zürich Wäscherei in Zurich in 2012; One Thousand Endless Tales – Dancing the Line of Flight (Story Telling), a group show in two chapters at White Space in Zurich in 2010; Ich Tier! (Du Mensch), a group exhibition at Perla-Mode in Zurich in 2010; "Queerscapes – From the Flow of Dunes to the Green Shimmer of the Oasis on the Horizon", the exhibition and art event of the offpride alternative queer festival at message salon downtown and Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich 2009; and Aggression, an international exhibition project co-curated with Oliver Kielmayer at Kunsthalle Winterthur in 2007, to which she also contributed an intense program of accompanying events, lectures and screenings. She was the author and curator of the discursive thematic project with over 30 participants from all over the world “Critique of Pure Image – Between Fake and Quotation,” comprising an international exhibition and theoretical symposium, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 2005. She co-curated the project and exhibition “Polyphony – Collaborative Practices, Part 2” at Shedhalle, Zurich , 2005. She has lectured at numerous international events, among them the conference “Never Look Back - Politics of Friendship” in Shedhalle, Zurich, Switzerland, 2001, the conference “Understanding the Balkans” in Skopje, Macedonia, 2001, “Konsequenz East-West” in Shedhalle, Zurich, 2002, and with the code flow research collective at the symposium “Art – Place – Technology,” Liverpool School of Art and Design / FACT, Liverpool, 2006.

In 2002 she edited and published the “CFront – Crossing Points East-West” book, a collection of texts developing a critical view on globalization, new technologies and media art in the context of East-West discussions within the art world. In 2004, after a workshop in Shedhalle, Zurich, published a book with theoretical texts and interviews, “KonsequenZ,” as an author and editor collective with Alain Kessi and Frederikke Hansen, exploring how different people in a critical discursive and political art context struggle to bring their ideals for society and art and their personal everyday behavior to match. The Fake Book, 2005, is available online.

Contact: sevo(art)kein.org