Art Exhibit Frames Trans Oppression in a Way that’s Easy To Understand
Share
The Other Bulgarian Women, is an art exhibition opening Tuesday, at The Steps, in Sofia, Bulgaria, that celebrates transgender women. Controversy around the exhibit has already led to calls for the resignation of the Minister of Culture and stoked a national scandal… all while the exhibition has yet to officially open.
The opening is planned to coincide with International Women’s Day March 8.
The art is multimedia work by Mihail Vuchkov, better known by his artist name Mísho.
View this post on Instagram
Above: Misho’s instagram post: The exhibition “The Other Bulgarian Women” by Mihail Vuchkov – Misho is inspired by the personal stories of a group of trans women in Bulgaria. The pictures show that despite the extreme marginalization of this community in our country, it exists and enriches our society. The photographic reconstructions draw a parallel with the paintings of Vladimir Dimitrov – the Master who sealed the last Bulgarian women subordinated to the patriarchal order, whose marginalization then, according to the author, is similar to that of the trans Bulgarian today.
Above: a photo of Vladdmir Dimitrov
The Other Bulgarian Women was inspired by the personal stories of a group of trans women in Bulgaria.
This work , which has been in the making for more than a decade and draws a parallel between the great Bulgarian painter and a national/historical figure Vladimir Dimitrov (1882 – 1960), has pushed far right politicians to demand a ban of the exhibition altogether.
Above: “Bleaching Cloth” is an example of Dinitrov’s work.
In the Mísho’s view, Dimitrov’s portraits managed to capture the “last Bulgarian women.”
These are last women who were subjected to and endured the patriarchy at its height, and whose marginalization is similar to that of trans women in Bulgaria today.
In the history of Bulgaria, which had a communist regime for much of the 20th century and part of the Eastern Bloc, men and women were considered equals.
Above: Dimitrov’s “Self portrait.”
Between 1924 and 1938 Dimitrov painted mostly people and nature from the villages in the Kyustendil region. Although emancipation had already achieved significant victories during this period, “the patriarchal order still prevailed in the countryside.”
Inspired by the female characters in Dimitrov’s paintings, Mísho decided to make a photographic reconstruction of his most popular paintings, replacing Dimitrov’s subjects with transgender women.
“National identity is hard to blend with LGBTQ+ rights [in Bulgaria],” Misho told The Calvert Journal. “Nationalists would say that through my art I am changing the meaning of history — as a criticism. They don’t want trans women to wear our traditional dress, and touch our symbolic Bulgarian rose. But LGBTQ+ people are Bulgarian, just like everyone else in this country.”
The controversy only increased when news broke that Misho had received state funding to create the series, via a 2020 Ministry of Culture grant promoting equality. The grant had amounted to £4,000 — roughly enough to cover two of the eight works.
Despite the small sum, some commentators demanded the Minister of Culture’s resignation, and on 15 February some of the staff on the commission that awarded Misho the grant were asked to resign. Half of the members did.
“The fact that the authorities gave me some money is important because it was the first time that the Bulgarian government acknowledged that Bulgarian trans women exist. For me, the biggest trans problem in Bulgaria is visibility. We know that somewhere there are trans people in our society, but we’re only fine with them because we’re not seeing them,” he said.
Although the outrage is recent, The Other Bulgarian Women has in fact been in the making for 12 years. The idea for the show came to Misho in in 2010, when he returned to Bulgaria after an MA in Media Studies at New York’s New School. Misho was sharing a flat with his ex-boyfriend and his friend Natasha Rich, a trans woman at the start of her transition. Rich, who features in one of Misho’s plexiglass paintings, was then working as a makeup artist for the Japanese brand Shiseido in Sofia. But that year, Rich decided to join the Sofia Pride Parade. The next day, she lost her job. Officially, she was let go due to the financial crisis, but Misho believes it was because Rich had been seen on TV during the parade. “I wanted to help her, so I went to Sofia Pride Parade, the only LGBTQ+ NGO we had in Bulgaria at the time (now we have six), to see how we could get her job back. They told me: ‘Misho, you are naive, you spent too much time in New York City, we cannot do anything about a queer person being fired in Bulgaria.’”
Vladimir Dimitrov’s ” The Girl with the Apples ”
Misho’s wants us to see his works as paintings, not photographs.
To that end, he has created an innovative medium, in which each shot is systematically layered on plexiglass sheets, creating a sense of three-dimensional depth. The work is illuminated by an individual LED system, specially created for the project.
Misho’s The Girl with Cherries
“My main motivation for this project is not the artistic perspective, the artist, or even the works themselves, it is taking an active stand. That’s my understanding of art,” says Mísho. “When I became involved with this subject, I wanted to find out what the state is doing for these people, from a legal or medical perspective, and I soon realized that it is doing nothing. What other group has been discriminated against to such an extent in modern times? I couldn’t find an answer to this question. In the pre-feminist era, women were as oppressed as trans-women are today. I spent years seeking out people who would agree to tell their personal stories.”
Above: Mihail Vuchkov aka Mísho
He elaborates: “Some things must be changed immediately: there must be an official medical channel by means of which these people can receive proper health care, psychological and psychiatric treatment and hormone therapy, and an easy pathway for document change which, however, has to be very well planned.”
The girl with the roses.
Mísho: “What I think we should do in order to understand trans-people is try to get a better idea of their problems. When they have not fully expressed themselves, when they haven’t started on this transition, they remain locked within this dogma. When they do everything, they can, be it raising their self-awareness, changing their name, trying to convince the people close to them, or starting the medical transition, they eventually reach that point when they can take a breath of fresh, warm air and finally be themselves, not enslaved by any dogmas whatsoever. In the rest of their lives, when they are not themselves, they are just living in pause mode, living by the opinions of everyone around them and not living their lives the way they would want to.”
The girl with the Irises.
“Nationalists would say that through my art I am changing the meaning of history — as a criticism. They don’t want trans women to wear our traditional dress, and touch our symbolic Bulgarian rose. But LGBTQ+ people are Bulgarian, just like everyone else in this country.”
The girl with the roses.
The exhibit is supported by Single Step Foundation, a leading LGBT organization in Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture, and Georgi Balinov, a Bulgarian-born, New York-based philanthropist. Bulgaria is one of the least LGBT friendly countries in Eastern Europe. With the Russians waging a war of aggression in nearby Ukraine weighing heavily over the opening Misho reminds us:
“In the context of today’s events, it is important to remember that Putin was first against gay people, then against protesters, then against journalists, and now against Ukrainians. This is how it starts – step by step! That is why we cannot show any tolerance for hate speech against human beings, and today we see it spreading freely even in our state administration. Every drop today will contribute to the flood tomorrow.”
Interestingly enough, what occurred to me was that an endeavor like this only works in a country as steeped in its own nationalistic and socialist ambitions. It’s only by having a common experience and signifiers so heavy with history that the trans women occupying that space can change the way Bulgarians see them.
As the countdown to the opening hastens I’m told two of Bulgaria’s nationalist parties, VMRO (Cyrillic – ВМРО ) and Vazrazhdane (Cyrillic – Възраждане), are planning a protest against the exhibit n front of The Steps.
As a massive migration wave of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing war heads into Bulgaria, it has also highlighted stark differences in treatment given to migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa, particularly Syrians who came in 2015. Some of the language has been disturbing to them, and hurtful. “These are not the refugees we are used to… these people are Europeans,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov told journalists earlier this week, of the Ukrainians. “These people are intelligent, they are educated people…. This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists…In other words,” he added, “there is not a single European country now which is afraid of the current wave of refugees.”
Feminist groups have mobilized to marching in honor of the International Women’s Day and in support of the exhibition, in front of The Steps. In order to prevent violent clashes authorities have asked the feminist groups to change the route of their march, however they will still pass in front of The Steps to show solidarity with the exhibition and the trans cause.
At least, I think, it’s not war.
Watch the trailer to the show below.
ABOUT MÍSHO
Mihail Vuchkov began his career in 1988 as a host on the music TV channel MM in Bulgaria. In the following years, he went on to hold various positions in the media landscape, including media giant ViacomCBS in NYC and as the editor, casting director and executive producer for Chouchkov Brothers, Old School Productions, Constantin Entertainment, BTV and Nova TV.
In 2010, he made the professional move from TV to cinema, working since then as a marketing strategist. He is responsible for the marketing strategies and advertising campaigns of various international and Bulgarian film productions, such as Sneakers, The Foreigner, Goodbye Mother, Shelter, Stoichkov, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, The Three Musketeers, The Invincibles, Broken Road, 12A, Lilly the Little Fish, No One, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Yatagan, Bad Girls, Action, etc.
In 2012 and 2013, Vuchkov became part of the organizational committee of Sofia Pride. His involvement resulted in changing the Sofia Pride route to its present one and laying the foundations of Sofia Pride Film Fest and Sofia Pride Art Week.
Vuchkov graduated in Spatial Design from the St Luke National High School for Applied Arts, Sofia, as well as in Stage Design from the New Bulgarian University. So far, he has had three single-artist exhibitions: Drugness, United in Diversity, and Shake the Fear.
