Boryana Rossa
Artist's Statement
8 Portraits of Cyborgs
My artistic practice centers on technology and the body, and on how scientific knowledge shapes our identities. I am particularly interested in the intersections between fields of knowledge—especially art and science. Alongside this, I study historical representations of hybrid identities and create my own visual forms of “chimeras.”
Technology is one of the fastest-developing spheres of human knowledge today, and art often anticipates how such knowledge might transform society. It imagines speculative worlds in which these developments have already been realized. On the one hand, art serves as a means of expressing our thoughts and fantasies; on the other, it situates them within a broader philosophical framework. By projecting possible futures through the scenarios it constructs, art turns exploration into ethical inquiry. It asks, for example: What would happen if we were to 3D-print a human being?
The Eight Portraits of Cyborgs series consist of eight portraits inspired by both historical and contemporary semi-documentary and semi-fictional characters, accompanied by textual manifestos ranging from antiquity to the present. Together, they demonstrate that the idea of hybrids between humans and technology is not new, even if contemporary debates about them have intensified only in the past century.
I do not see us as isolated, singular selves, but as complex, syncretic beings. We exist in symbiosis with the microbes within us; we rely on our phones and computers; some of us live with artificial, life-sustaining electronic implants. My work approaches these relationships by proposing technology as a means of liberation, while also critiquing its instrumentalization in service of the primal human drive to dominate and control.
Artist's Bio and Exhibitions
Boryana Rossa, Ph.D, is an interdisciplinary artist and curator who works in the fields of technology and art, film, video, performance and bio-art. Her work is focused on the influence of technology and science on all fields of human activity.
Rossa’s works have been shown internationally at such venues as Brooklyn Museum and
Exit Art, New York;
Kunstwerke and Akademie der Kunste, Berlin;
Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa;
Museum of Contemporary Art (MUMOK), Vienna;
Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw;
Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMCA) and National Gallery of Fine Arts, Sofia;
First Balkan Biennale, Thesaloniki;
Coreana Museum, Seoul;
Biennial for Electronic Art, Perth (BEAP), Australia;
Foundation for Art and Creative Technologies (FACT), Liverpool;
and Society for Art and Technology (SAT), Montreal, among others.
In 2004 together with artist and filmmaker Oleg Mavromatti she establishes ULTRAFUTURO – a futurist artist collective which work is focused on imagining scenarios of our technological future, the fusion of people and machines, space inhabitation and the social aspects of all these.
In 2018, together with Heidi Hehnly, associate professor of biology at Syracuse University, she established The BioArt Research Coalition of Syracuse, a forum at Syracuse University where artists and scientists from different fields meet to share their research and discuss it with representatives of other disciplines.
Works shown at:
Rossa and Mavromatti performed also as ULTRAFUTURO in Trickster Theatre, Exit Art, NY between 2006-09.
Collections:
Her works are in numerous public and private collections among which as
Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Bank-Group, State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki;
Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum of Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, NY;
Sofia City Art Gallery; Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art and others.
Her performances and videos have been included in international art archives such as the performing art archive re.act.feminism and Transitland Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1989-2009.
Awards:
2019-2021 CUSE Interdisciplinary Seminar Grant , Syracuse University, together with Dr. Heidi Hehnley for the Bio-Art Mixer;
Recipient of the 2018 College of Visual and Performing Arts Faculty Excellence in Research award;
2014 Grid Spinoza Research and Development grant funded by the European Commission for the project “The Mirror of Faith”;
In 2014 she has been awarded Ruf Award for contemporary art, and the 2014 NYFA Fellowship Award for Digital/Electronic Arts together with Oleg Mavromatti. Her dissertation was supported by the research grant of the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Rensselaer (HASS) 2010-2012. She also holds the Essential Reading for Art Writers of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA, Sofia) .
Featured in:
Brooklyn Rail, New Yorker; Kultura Weekly, 39 Grama, n.paradoxa, Nature, New York Times.