16
The first village museum of street art in the world opened doors a few days ago in Staro Zhelezare, a small village near Plovdiv. The exposition features original photographs taken during the StreetArt festival in Staro Zhelezare since 2013.
The idea belongs to a Bulgarian-Polish family of artists who have, for years, been painting pictures on the white walls of the houses together with their students from Poland.
Katarzyna and Ventzislav Piryankov live in Poznan where they run an art school for university applicants, but they spend their summers in Ztaro Zhelezare where Ventzi inherited a house. Over the course of time they turned their village home into an art camp where they invite their students. Every summer young Polish artists come here to give free rein to their imagination, using the walls of the village houses as the canvas for their paintings. About 10 years ago their work put Staro Zhelezare on the tourist map of Bulgaria, and now, the village museum of street art is about to put the village on the world map of street art.
More:
“This year we decided to have a street art museum. We wanted to have everything that has been happening over the past 10 years concentrated in one place – lots of photographs of life in the village, of our first years here, of all events connected with art,” says Katarzyna Piryankova, in an interview with the Bulgarian news agency BTA.
The artists use acrylic paints and spray. Musicians, actors, scientists, politicians come to life on the walls of Staro Zhelezare’s houses. For example, in one picture Queen Elizabeth II is next to granny Velika from the village, in another – Ivan stands next to Barack Obama. This year’s motto is: Travels known and loved. The newest paintings in Ztaro Zhelezare, the work of nine artists from Poland, depict characters from adventure movies like Indiana Jones, Jack Sparrow, or Forrest Gump seated on a bench next to a Bulgarian granny.
“We see it as socially engaged art – the kind of art that has a bond with the people and addresses them,” says Katarzyna Piryankova for the BTA. It is the kind of art that brings a smile to people’s faces, she says, that gives food for thought, that shows us what are the things that matter and what makes us happy.
Compiled by Veneta Nikolova
Translated and posted by Milena Daynova
Photos: BTA
On 17 October, after a break of several years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the fifth edition of the "EcoMunicipality - Sustainable City and Society" competition, an initiative of the French Embassy and the French Institute in Bulgaria, will be launched...
Bulgarian Folk Dance Club "Chemshir" from Armagh, Northern Ireland, will participate in the program of "Culture Night" in the city of Omagh, Northern Ireland. The ensemble’s performance is today at 19:00 local time in the central square..
An unusual opening of the new school year was made by the students and teachers of the Bulgarian school "Asen and Ilia Peikov" in Rome and Florence. The event was attended by the Ambassador of Bulgaria to Italy H.E. Kostadin Kodzhabashev, as well as..
After the start of the school year – in Bulgaria it is always on 15 September – comes the start of the new academic year for university students, with..
Identity codes lie at the basis of genealogy – the science of tracing the bloodline, the origin of humans, family ties. Identity codes is what sets us..
20 Bulgarian breweries will offer a taste of their unique beer recipes at the Hops Street festival, to be held at the NDK (National Palace of Culture) in..
Partly Cloudy
Clear