Luchezar Boyadjiev

Luchezar Boyadjiev (1957) was born in Sofia where he lives and works. He graduated from the Department of Art History at the National Fine Arts Academy in Sofia in 1980. He completed his art education while living in New York City, USA in the 1980ies. He started his artistic career after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. His work is about personal interpretation of social processes, about the interaction between private and public, about urban visuality and the world of today split between utopia and dystopia. His media is installation, photography, drawing, objects, text, video, and performative lecture, as well as curated exhibitions. In 2025 he had the solo-exhibitions “On Vacation… Corpus Equorum 2004-2024” at the National Gallery-Kvadrat500 in Sofia; and “Urban Daydreaming” at the Bulgarian Culture and Info Center in Skopje, N. Macedonia. In 2020 his solo show “Luchezar Boyadjiev: Re-building the World of Images. 1991-2019” was seen at the MOMus Contemporary in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2023 his solo shows included “Urban Daydreaming” at the ICA-Sofia Gallery and “Public Scale, Private Size” at the Structura Gallery, both in Sofia. In 2022 the artist took part in the Manifesta 14 biennial in Prishtina, Kosovo; and in 2023 in the 4th Autostrada Biennial in Prizren, Kosovo.

Luchezar Boyadjiev is one of the most visible contemporary artists from Bulgaria and among his selected exhibitions are: the solo shows “Dystopian Cozy”, Sarieva Gallery, Plovdiv (2018); “Luchezar Boyadjiev. Sic transit media mundi /The present is too short and rather tight/”, Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia (retro) (2018); and the group shows in: 2026 “Horizon Ablaze”, TcAM, Taichung, Taiwan; “Black Mirror”, Ludwig Museum, Budapest; 2019 “The Influencing Machine”, Nikodim Gallery, Bucharest; 2016-17 “Economize”, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, as well as “Symptoms of Society”, Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou) and Zhejiang Art Museum (Zhejiang Sheng), China; in 2016 “Cold Wind from the Balkans”, PERA Museum, Istanbul; “Low-budget Utopias”, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; in 2015 “The Grammar of Freedom”, GARAGE MCA, Moscow, “Inside Out”, City Gallery, Ljubljana, and “Art for Change 1985-2015”, City Art Gallery, Sofia; in 2014 “Disconsent”, CCA “Ancient Bath”, Plovdiv; in 2013 “Economics in Art”, MOCAK, Cracow; in 2012 “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times”, 1st Biennial, Kiev, and “The Eye Never Sees itself”, 2nd Biennial, Yekaterinburg; and in 2011 “The Global Contemporary”, ZKM, Karlsruhe and many others.

His notable curatorial projects are: 2026 “Native Resolution / Innate ИНАТ”, BUNA 4.0 festival, Varna; 2024 “Emergency Entrance”, Graduation Show / School4artists’2024, ICA-Sofia Gallery, Sofia; 2022 “Self-splaining. A Triumph of Empathy”, Manifesta 14, Pristina, Kosovo (co-curator); 2018 “Trauma Mapping / Aksiniya Peicheva”, ICA-Sofia Gallery, Sofia; 2016 “Georgi Ruzhev – a Retrospective”, ICA-Gallery, Sofia (with Iara Boubnova); 2015 “The Monument – a Public Misunderstanding?”, Endeavors 2015 at Vaska Emanouilova Gallery/Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia; 2013 “Academic Culture from the period of Transformation (1980-1991). The Academic ‘Underground’”, Alma Mater Gallery, CC of Sofia University, Sofia; 2012 “Beautiful Game”, Mestna Galerija, Ljubljana (with Alenka Gregoric); 2010 “Beyond Credit. Contemporary Art and Mutual Trust”, Antrepo 5, Sanat Limani (Istanbul European Capital of Culture 2010), Istanbul (with Maria Vassileva and Iara Boubnova); 2005 “Red Riviera Revisited”, for Visual Seminar at ICA-Sofia, Red House Center for Culture and Debate, Sofia; 2001 “Small Talk”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje; 1999 Station Sofia. “Translocations. (new) media/art”, Generali Foundation, Vienna (with Iara Boubnova); 1992 3rd International Biennial - Bulgarian participation, Istanbul; 1990 “End of Quotation”, Club of the (eternally) Young Artists, Sofia State University Gallery, Sofia; 1989 “Merry Christmas - Hanging Objects”, Club of the (eternally) Young Artist, Universiada Hall, Sofia.

He is the recipient of: The Prix for Extraordinary Merit in Culture (Visual Arts) of the Sofia Municipality for 2018; of the Grand Prix for his participation in the exhibition "Onufri'98. Permanent Instability" at the National Gallery, Tirana, Albania in 1998; and the 1989 Art Criticism Award from the Union of Bulgarian Artists.