Boyadjiev was born in Sofia in 1957. Since graduating from the National Academy of Arts in 1980, following studies in art history and art theory, he has contributed to redefining artistic practice in his native Bulgaria. Boyadjiev’s corpus is dominated by his personal interpretations of various social issues and realities, both historical and new, and he has been a leading figure of Bulgarian contemporary art since the mid-1980s.
Through a wide array of media such as installations, photographs, objects and drawings, video, performative lectures and even guided tours, Boyadjiev investigates the bilateral trajectories of personal and public space, the relations guiding micro and macro territories, and the implications of capitalist consumerism for democracy’s emerging social patterns, especially following the dissolution of eastern socialist models. He picks apart the often radical changes in private areas of life brought about by these economic systems, nonetheless addressing these weighty subjects with ironic, cynical and often critical tones. Even art and artists themselves are not safe from Boyadjiev’s capitalism-deconstructing gaze.
Boyadjiev likes to disrupt symbols of religion and power as a form of commentary with which to challenge ideas of utopia and dystopia, contextualising so-called Eastern and Western relations. The 1990s in particular saw Boyadjiev play with these topics. Fortification of Faith (1991) depicts Jesus and his twin brother in the style of Bulgarian iconography, while Philosophical Cemetery (1992) uses mythical symbols in place of figures who influenced democratic and/or totalitarian political models.
Recently, Boyadjiev has switched his focus to the shifting parameters of a globalised, digital and virtual world. He scrutinises advertising, billboards and unsolicited visual stimuli of the present day, equating them to religious symbols, maintaining his consumerist criticism as a thematic bridge.
