BlackSeaResidency
Residency
29. May- 7. June 2026
Artist Talk
28. May 2026
Little Birds Place Gallery Sofia 6 pm
Cristina Calderoni & Hubert Hasler (Vienna based) & Viketi Komitski & Lyuben Domozetski (Sofia based)
George Voynov, Asti Art Hotel and I established a five-year sustainable residency cooperation in Sinemorets, Bulgaria, in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum in Sofia.
The cooperation includes a one-week stay in Sinemorets at the Asti Art Hotel and one or more subsequent exhibitions featuring the artworks created during the residency.
During the two weeks, artists from Vienna will work together with artists from Bulgaria to create works of art, which will then be exhibited together. The collaboration between artists from both cities is intended to stimulate exchange and create a basis for sustainable cooperation between artists, curators and galleries in both countries.
In addition, we are planning an artist talk/performance/lecture in Sofia with the Austrian Cultural Forum in Sofia, under the direction of Antonia Bierbaumer and Johanna Himmer from the University of Sofia, at the embassy or the University/German studies department. The residency is financed by George Voynov and Asti Art Hotel, and we hope that the ACF Sofia will cover the travel expenses of the Vienna based artists.
CRISTINA CALDERONI is a multidisciplinary artist. Her work is characterised by partecipatory practice and site- specic projects, using industrial waste materials that take on a political meaning, following the concept of identity and collective memory. Her research process starts from the archaeology of the place and the trace of the human in it. In her artistic process, the assembly of the remnants of everyday life becomes an action to create thoughts. Her works include different media such as installation, textiles, sounds, performance and language.
Cristina Calderoni lives and works between Treviso and Vienna. Her work has been exhibited internationally. Since 2021 she has collaborated with Lanificio Paoletti, where she has her studio. Recent projects include exhibitions in Italy, Austria, Brazil, Spain and Turkey.
LYUBEN DOMOZETSKI, art historian, painter and naturalist, explores the relationship between nature and art history in his paintings, incorporating his experiences from both fields into his work. His connection to nature and his drive to discover new species of orchids, which he visualises through his passion for painting, lend his paintings a special aura. Like a scientist, Domozetski embarks on a quest for understanding and structure, viewed globally in terms of the nature of the world. Technically, he draws on the tradition of the medieval Orthodox Church.
Domozetski is living and working in Sofia. He is exhibiting and curating in Bulgaria as well as abroad. With Little Bird Gallery / Sofia he participated at the Vienna Contemporary Art Fair in 2025.
HUBERT HASLER, photographer and installation artist, deals with the foreign in nature, the neophytes, in his projects. He playfully draws analogies to parts of our xenophobic society. At the same time, he positions himself as a wanderer through so-called ‘occupied territories,’ capturing the infiltration of plants on film. During his residency, Hasler will roam the area around Senimorets in search of neophytes and expand his series #overrun, for which he has already made films in Malta, Jordan, the Maldives and Germany.
He is living and working in Vienna, exhibiting internationally and nationally. In October 2026 he will have a solo show at Meta Spatiu/Timisoara.
VIKENTI KOMITSKI, is a multimedia artist whose exhibitions have something of the flair of archaeological presentations. Bones hidden in pictures, clay vases, slightly out of place, archaic-looking tools hanging on the wall, wall sculptures grown together from found objects create a poetic mood and the vision of hidden treasures.
At the moment, he is focusing on the archaic material clay. In his projects, he delves deeply into history and literature, his passions, which are visualised in his artistic works. He uses his time at the residency to work with metal and clay, which he will fire in diverse ways. Time for alchemy.
Komitsky is living and working in Sofia, participating in many international cooperations and projects.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Home is a missing tooth the tongue reaches for hardness but falls into absence
Cristina Calderoni’s letter work explores the journey home, confusion, and loss, portraying home as both a personal and shared experience. The artist seeks to transcend her subjective self, embracing the specificity and evolution of the bodies she interacts with. Calderoni archives attempts, words, and gestures, examining the dynamics, particularities, and commonalities of relationships. Through intimacy and sharing, she collects traces from people and spaces, encapsulating their stories in her work and translating them into variable lettering and media. Her artistic practice delves into the earthly, relational realm, where physical interactions spark a visual epiphany.
The Southern Bulgarian Black Sea coast is one of the places in Bulgaria that strongly attracts me because of its distinctive natural environment and rich historical past. The exploration of wild nature, the reinterpretation of symbols and images from ancient and medieval art, and their contemporary readings lie at the core of my artistic practice.
The study of wild orchids—which reach their main flowering period at the end of May and the beginning of June—will form the basis of my artistic works. I will focus on an exceptionally intriguing plant, Serapias, which is widespread in this part of the Black Sea region. The area’s rich historical past will be reinterpreted through a new perspective: the heritage of antiquity will be juxtaposed with the theme of invasive species—an inheritance left by our own contemporary era.
In the forthcoming project, I will continue developing the descriptive, plastic line that characterizes my painting. This approach is grounded in specific technical explorations that are oriented toward the traditions of medieval Orthodox art.
HUBERT HASLER
It all began with a 10kg sack of potatoes on a bus from Münster to the province of North Rhine-Westphalia, which was allowed to travel in its own seat.
I have been studying neophytes, non-native plants, for over a decade now. These are plants that conquer their perceived new home mainly through human transport, collecting enthusiasts or landscaping.
The first short film about overrun – a car packed to the edge with Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica), which I brought to the studio to create an installation and photograph. I am thus actively participating in the spread of these negatively connoted plants.
In Malta, I carry agaves (Agave americana) from one place to another; in South Korea, I found acacias (Robinia pseudoacacia) in a remote location near a very old temple; and on Felhidhoo, an island in the Vaavu Atoll in the Maldives, I help damiana (Turnera ulmifolia) to get from one island to another, and much more.
My overrun short films are a testimony to human activity, accompanied by the unstoppable mixing and spread of these unwelcome plants, symptomatic of a constantly changing society.
huberthasler @instagram
The project explores archetypal forms through clay, focusing on the container as one of the earliest foundations of culture.
By connecting psychoanalysis with pottery, it considers both as ancient practices deeply rooted in human experience, memory, and the formation of meaning.
FOLLOWING
May/June 2027
Paula Flores & Isidora Krstic & Guadalupe Aldrete (Vienna based) & Nora Ampova, Brad Downey (Sofia based)
September 2028
Chiara Campanile & Rafael Lippuner & Parham Rostam Abadi (Vienna based) & Svetlana Mirceva (Sofia based)
September 2029
Natalia Gurova & Mila Balzhieva (Vienna based) & Miryana Todorova (Sofia based)
May/June 2030
Eva Schartmüller/RobertReszner & Anna Lerchbaumer (Vienna based) & Stoyan Zivkov (Sofia based)
PHOTOCREDITS
Cristina Calderoni images by Pablo Chiereghin
and by the artists