DANIELA
KOSTOVA
From: Sofia, Bulgaria
Based in: New York, USA
Born: 1974
Main Artistic Theme: Identity & Cultural Representation
​Current Themes: Play, Risk and Control
Web: danielakostova.com
Award winning interdisciplinary artist, Daniela works with video, performance, photography and installation. Her work addresses issues of geography and cultural representation, the production and crossing of socio-cultural borders, and the uneasy process of translation and communication.
​
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Daniela combines photography, sculpture and architecture to create large-scale installations, which challenge viewers preconceived perception of reality. Her work addresses issues of migration and cultural representation by drawing parallel between societies at different stages of capitalist development. Informed by her personal history of a Bulgarian-American immigrant it looks for reoccurring narratives and emerging hybrid forms.
Daniela exhibits internationally in places such as: Sofia City Gallery, Bulgaria and Religare Art Gallery, New Delhi, India (2011), Antakya Biennale, Turkey and New Saxon Art Association, Dresden, Germany (2010), The State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia, Moscow, Russia (2009), KK Projects, New Orleans, LA (2009), Estacion Indianilla Museum, Mexico (2008), MAN Museum, Nuoro, Italy (2007), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2005), Centre d’art Contemporain, Geneva (2004), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino (2004), Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2003), and others.
Selected Exhibitions
LOOSE, Art for the Wild Child
Loose at A.I.R Gallery
Daniela Kostova’s solo exhibition, Loose, at A.I.R. Gallery (the first women’s cooperative gallery in the United States, founded in 1972) in DUMBO Brooklyn, questions notions of safety in overprotective American society, contrasting American and Bulgarian standards of childhood play.The participatory Flip-House combines suburban and nomadic lifestyles, while Adventure Playground depicts a metaphor for the current European economic crisis. Turning her home into a studio in It’s De-Lovely & Loose, she deliberately merge the space between art and life.
Kostova created a playground within her living room at home and invited her daughter and friends to play within this set up environment of a forbidden safe zone. Photographs of the children playing in Kostova’s indoor playground were ultimately shot during a few sessions.