Bulgarian Fund for Women in partnership with the National Gallery presents

NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK

Artists: Boryana Petkova & Iskra Blagoeva, Boryana Rossa, Katya Dimova, Krasimira Butseva, Monika Popova, nada ree, Natalia Jordanova, Neda Milanova, Oksana Kazmina, Rayna Teneva, Sophia Grancharova, Zelikha Shoja

Curator: Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva

The exhibition presents the results from the BFW’s open call for the Fund for art projects by women artists in 2022.

The female authors and their concepts were chosen among over 200 candidates in the competition. The expert jury consists of the curators Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva, Daniela Radeva, Stefka Tsaneva, Margarita Dorovska, as well as Gergana Kutseva, Dobromira Terpesheva, and Rosena Ivanova from the BFW team.

Invited to respond to the state of emergency, challenges, and urgency in this day and age, the women artists react with varied intensity, character, style, and a great amount of sincerity. Contrasts and similarities between them, in the choice of media, their candor, turning towards their inner selves, and sharing personal stories, experiences, and memories all create a common environment of empathy and reciprocation. What inevitably connects them as women authors is exposing stereotypes about women’s social role and position. They are also connected by the needle as a tool chosen by most of them, but also as a byword for that patriarchal image of the woman holding her needlework. An image rooted in the consciousness of generations on end, which all these women defy.

The story of the needle resembles a woman’s story, as confirmed by many feminist theorists. However, it does not follow a specific linearity, but is ambiguous and controversial, simultaneously a story about isolation, reassurance, and seclusion, but also about interacting with the world and opposition. The needle is the symbol of the skill passed on in the family, over generations, from grandmothers and motherс, knowing what it is to be a woman, the natural attraction towards the warmth of the fabric, and intimate interaction. The process of embroidery and sewing is story-telling. It encompasses the whole patience for bringing the threads together and passing on memories and messages. The needle as a means to create and to mend, as one of the symbols of coziness, of childhood memories, is fragile, but sharp.

The artist Louise Bourgeois writes that needles are never aggressive. But somehow pain is also present in them. They are like a generalized image of women - splendidly sophisticated and simultaneously strong and skillful. Their fulfillment is often linked with hardships and proving themselves, literally going through the eye of a needle. To discover a female leader, a woman in politics, or a female artist in a museum is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The general understanding of feminist issues, delving deeply into women’s problems, and the female presence and participation in social life fully match this phrase.

The needle or the pen are the symbols of century-long role opposition. The tools destined for the particular sex to express themselves have been in an eternal war. Women, however, have the power and the confidence to use what they have been given in order to demolish this stereotype and to be both sentimental and equally analytical and prickly. Like a needle tip.

Female artists coming from different cultural contexts, belonging to different generations, with different experiences, are linked here on various levels - literally through the line passing along their bodies, the deftness of their hands, the experience, the knowledge of their family or our shared history, the journey, becoming one with nature, emigration, alienation, mother-daughter relationships. These are the stories of women who are diversion in the museum, needles in a haystack.

All pieces in the exhibition were created in 2023 with the support of the Bulgarian Fund for Women and this is the first time they have been exhibited in front of an audience.