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Dessislava Dimova

The Art of Ordinary Life: Women Artists in Bulgaria

Women have actively participated in the art scene in Bulgaria since the late 19th century, and women artists were celebrated during the socialist era. However, few of them were given the recognition they deserve, both socially and historically. For many women artists who began their careers in the second half of the 20th century, simply carving out a space for art in a highly controlled social and artistic environment was a quietly resilient labor of everyday life. As wives and mothers, as art teachers or illustrators, making art for friends and with friends, they managed to achieve their own measure of the extraordinary, which art history has only recently begun to account for. Among them, Tekla Aleksieva (b. 1944) and Stanka Tsonkova-Usha (b. 1952) appear to have taken two distinct, almost opposing paths in living through art and creating the possibility for it in their unique life circumstances.

Dessislava Dimova is an art historian and curator based in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds an MA in Art History from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia and MA in Aesthetics from CRMEP, Middlesex University, London. She is currently a doctoral student at the University of Sofia.Her work is focused on modern and contemporary art in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe. Since 2022 Desislava Dimova is the founder and director of the Bulgarian Art and Culture Foundation, Sofia, dedicated to the study and presentation of contemporary art from Bulgaria internationally. The Foundation organised the research and donation of artworks by contemporary Bulgarian artists for the Centre George Pompidou, Paris (2025).