Vasilena Gankovska was born in Troyan in 1978. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and a master’s at the National Academy of Art in Sofia.
Gankovska’s corpus and aesthetic research are a study of urban life and spaces, and how they are used and appropriated. She relates the urban contexts of the former Eastern Bloc countries with other fields, media and culture, such as architecture, design and fashion, art and ideology. This urban enquiry is complemented by her reflections on the genesis and evolution of the pop and visual culture in post-socialist society, namely via the influence of the TV series formats (soap operas, telenovelas, reality TV). Telenovela and Urban Melodramas, projects shown respectively in Vienna and Sofia in 2008, were the conclusions of this research.
Gankovska’s interest in urban life has naturally led her all around the world both for exhibitions (Vienna, Warsaw, Sofia, Los Angeles and Zurich, among others) and specific projects. Her interest in TV media gave rise to Urban Melodramas in 2008. In 2014 Visual Strategies. Urban space reformulated conveyed aspects of her artistic research by complementing her own findings with those of her peers, such as Luchezar Boyadjiev and Kamen Stoyanov. 2016 saw Gankovska assume the role of gallery owner/curator, when she took over the Galerie IG Bildende Kunst in Vienna for a short period. In 2018, she began investigating the heritage of Soviet architecture in Moscow, particularly of buildings housing cultural institutions or hubs (cinemas, libraries, etc.).
As a rule, Gankovska’s art documents socio-political processes through more unsuspecting and highly personal experiences.
Vasilena Gankovska has lived and worked between Vienna and Sofia since 2001.
