Vasilena Gankovska‘s project URBAN INTERVENTIONS tackles the problem of the city surroundings, which very often contain graffiti or tags with offending, sexist or racist connotations, which could unlock different negative experiences, feelings of insecurity and even a sense of imminent threat. Replacing them with friendly and positive, inclusive messages and images can change people’s experiences in the city. Different elements of street art techniques are used in these series of specially created motifs, as well as slogans and instructions which could highlight the friendly and inclusive character of the environment they are placed in.

Vasilena Ganovska was born in 1978. She lives and works in Vienna and Sofia. She studied at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, and in 2006 completed her Masters in Visual Arts and Cultural Studies at the Academy for Visual Arts in Vienna, Austria. Vasilena’s interests include research and analysis of urban space and the interactions between architecture, design and visual arts. She works mostly in the field of painting by using the tools of photography, video and street art. She has taken part and exhibited in: Moscow Cinema Project, House on the Embankment, Moscow, 2018; Situation 3 – from shape to composition, Studio Mariahilferstraße, Vienna, part of Open Studio Day, Vienna Art Week 2017; Situation 2, part 1, Mandelkern project, Vienna, 2016; Objects of Subjectivity, LLLLLI, Vienna, 2016; Caution: Wet Paint!, Sofia City Art Gallery 2014; Visual Strategies. Urban Space Reformulated, book project, 2014.

URBAN INTERVENTIONS is part of the art interventions, curаted by The Fridge and realized as part of “Sense of a City: Inclusive, Safe and Sustainable Plovdiv”, a project by the Bulgarian Fund for Women, implemented as a part of the program Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019.