| THE LAST VALVE Performance at artist's Apartment, Sofia, 2004 "The Last Valve" is a manifesto of a future free of gender distinctions. Rossa sews her vulva shut with surgical thread, playing with the common Bulgarian sexist expression "stitched up cunt" defining women who prefer to choose when and with whom to have sex and do not submit to the desires of the men around. Rossa was inspired by existing transgender models of sexuality in the animal world, by sexually hybrid human and animal bodies, and by the emergence of artificial robotic and biological cyborgs that are free of gender determinations. All these models propose escape from heteronormative binarism. These models also propose possible society, which has the potential to accept more flexible notions of sex and gender, to embrace diversity, and to create more fluid definitions of gender/sex appropriateness.(Boryana Rossa) BORYANA ROSSA and ULTRAFUTURO |
BORYANA ROSSA US Boryana Rossa is an interdisciplinary artist and curator whose works have been shown at steirischer herbst, Graz; National Gallery of Fine Arts, Sofia; 1st Balkan Biennale, Thesaloniki; Kunst-Werke and Akademie der Künste, Berlin; The 1st and 2nd Moscow Biennale For Contemporary Art; Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art (MUMOK) Vienna; Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw; Sofia Arsenal - Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMCA), Sofia tec. In 2004 together with the Russian artist Oleg Mavromatti, Rossa establishes ULTRAFUTURO – an art group interested in technology, science and their social implications. In 2012, she finished her PhD on Post Cold -War Gender Performances at Rensselaer, Troy, NY. She is also a director of Sofia Queer Forum, together with philosopher Stanimir Panayotov and a NYFA fellow in Media Arts for 2014 together with Mavromatti. Currently Rossa is an Assistant Professor of Transmedia at the Syracuse University, NY. |