The exhibition by Denitsa Milusheva at the Dechko Uzunov House Museum, part of the Art Gallery in Kazanlak, addresses the theme of presence and experience in the contemporary world, in which a significant portion of our lives unfolds online.
In the mid-1990s, when internet art, known as net.art, emerged, it revived one of the key slogans of earlier avant-gardes: the dissolution of the boundary between art and everyday life. Described by Alexei Shulgin, one of the pioneers of net.art, as “ultimate modernism,” it perhaps comes closest to fulfilling this ideal of 20th-century avant-garde art.
The development of technologies and communications keeping us connected 24/7 has achieved what many people in the past dreamed of – being able to reach virtually anyone, anywhere on the planet. The 21st century brought the boom of social media and a form of online life that often feels more consuming than real life. Everything must be shown and shared; otherwise, it is as if it never happened.
What does this migration of our lives and feelings into the digital sphere actually bring us? Does the constant reporting of our experiences on social media provide the sense of closeness, sharing and support that we need?
These are the questions Denitsa Milusheva raises in her current exhibition, which includes one new and two earlier works, each offering different perspectives on the theme.
Performance of an algorithmic consciousness is a series of five illuminated panels presenting fragments from a fictional Instagram profile, inbetween_fantasy_reality. Many of the images and texts are generated with the help of artificial intelligence, following the artist’s prompts and based on her own photographs used as source material. The content revolves around keywords such as vulnerability, intimacy and melancholy. Here, the artist searches for a sense of closeness and the experience of something that does not truly exist, yet feels strikingly real. Can we connect to the life of the character presented there, and is there anything preventing us from sharing their emotions?
The second series, Identities without a body, invites us to reflect on slogans that shape behavioural models in the contemporary world. White T-shirts display AI-generated phrases drawn from the works of Byung-Chul Han, such as: ‘Everything must be visible – even the soul’ and ‘In the swarm there is no “we”.’ According to the artist, ‘they represent this sense of obligation to remain constantly “visible” and to curate and display every experience on social media.’
The new work, created especially for the exhibition, is a three-channel video installation. Can you feel instead of me? presents three actors documenting themselves for social media while crying inconsolably. The piece references the video I’m Too Sad to Tell You by the legendary artist Bas Jan Ader. Often described as a representative of romantic conceptualism, he was among the pioneers who introduced direct personal emotion into artworks. If this was revolutionary in the art of the 1970s, Milusheva’s work comments on the contemporary phenomenon of sharing videos in which people display their emotions during difficult moments in their lives. The piece raises the question: can we transfer our feelings into the network and allow others to co-experience them?
For better or worse, everything is now online, and it is hard to imagine life without an internet connection. The growing integration of AI-driven applications into both our work and daily lives brings a new mix of excitement and anxiety. What the new algorithms of presence will be remains to be seen.
Denitsa Milusheva is a visual artist working in the fields of performance, sculpture, and conceptual installation. Her practice explores perception, identity and the transformations of the body within contemporary spatial, social and digital contexts.
Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions and forums in Bulgaria and abroad, including Fear and Love (2023) at Vaska Emanuilova Gallery (Sofia City Art Gallery), curated by Galina Dimitrova-Dimova; Close Encounters – Visual Dialogues (2017) at the Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia; Metareserves 2024 at the Stara Zagora City Art Gallery; and Metareserves 2025 – Fixed Transformations at the Rayko Aleksiev Hall, Sofia (Union of Bulgarian Artists), curated by Atanas Totlyakov; What’s Next? (2021) at Credo Bonum Gallery and Heerz Tooya Gallery, curated by Galina Dimitrova-Dimova; Your Body Is Death Given (2018) at 1m² ART Gallery, Veliko Tarnovo, curated by Martina Yordanova; Assembly of Shame (2023) at DOZA Gallery, Sofia, curated by Ivo Dimchev as well as within the 23rd Biennial of Humor and Satire in Gabrovo, curated by Margarita Dorovska, and the Geumgang Nature Art Biennial in South Korea.
Milusheva works as a cultural organiser and is part of the team at TaM – a space for cultural and social events in Veliko Tarnovo. Alongside her artistic practice, she is also engaged in academia as an assistant in the Visual Studies program at St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo.
Galina Dimitrova-Dimova is an art historian, curator and cultural project organiser with 27 years of experience. She was a curator and project manager at the Interspace Media Art Center in Sofia from 1999 to 2008, after which she worked independently with many of Bulgaria’s active cultural organisations. Since 2009, she has been co-curator and organiser of the DA Fest International Digital Arts Festival. She was a project coordinator at the Credo Bonum Foundation (2011–2019) and curator of Credo Bonum Gallery (2013–2015). Since 2016, she has been teaching in the Digital Arts Master’s program at the National Academy of Arts. In 2018, she co-founded DA LAB Foundation together with Venelin Shurelov and Antoni Rayzhekov, and has since served as curator and project coordinator. Since 2023, she has been a curator at the Sofia City Art Gallery, Vaska Emanuilova branch. Among her recent curatorial projects are Like a Whisper: Poetically Political Art at SCAG (2024), the trilogy Fear and Love (2023), Shame and Guilt (2025), and Care and Healing (2025) at Vaska Emanuilova Gallery, SCAG; Contemporary Art Week in Plovdiv (2022) on the theme The Weight of Existence; and What’s Next?, presented at Credo Bonum Gallery, Heerz Tooya Gallery (Veliko Tarnovo), and Vratsa City Art Gallery (2021), among others.
This event is part of the gallery’s cultural calendar marking the 125th anniversary of the founding of the art collection of Art Gallery – Kazanlak.
General media partner: Bulgarian National Radio.