Luchezar Boyadjiev

Luchezar Boyadjiev (1957) was born in Sofia, where he lives and works. He graduated in History of Art from the National Art Academy in Sofia in 1980. He continued his artistic education while living in New York City, USA in the 1980s. He began his artistic career after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In his work, he engages with a personal interpretation of social processes, with the interaction between private and public, with urban visuality and today’s world split between utopia and anti-utopia. His media are installation, photography, drawing, objects, text, video and performative lectures.

In 2018, the retrospective exhibition “Luchezar Boyadjiev. Sic transit media mundi /The Present is Too Short and Rather Tight/” is organized at the City Art Gallery in Sofia. For the exhibition, the artist is awarded the 2018 Sofia Municipality Award for outstanding achievements in the field of culture (visual art). In 2020, his retrospective exhibition “Luchezar Boyadjiev. Re-building the World of Images. 1991-2019” is organized at the MOMus Contemporary in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2023, his solo exhibitions include: “Urban Daydreaming” at ICA-Gallery and “Public Scale, Private Size” at Structura Gallery, both in Sofia. In 2022 the artist participated in the Manifesta 14 Nomadic Biennial in Prishtina, Kosovo; and in 2023 in the 4th Autostrada Biennial in Prizren, Kosovo.

In 2025 the Luchezar Boyadjiev’s one-artist exhibition titled “Corpus Equidae. On Vacation 2004-2024” will open at the National Gallery, Kvadrat 500 in Sofia.

Luchezar Boyadjiev is one of the most internationally visible contemporary artists from Bulgaria. Among his recent exhibitions are “Dystopian Cozy” at Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv (solo), and the group exhibitions “The Influencing Machine”, 2022-MCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw and 2019-Nikodim Gallery, Bucharest; in 2017 “Economize! On the Relationship of Art and Economy”, as well as “Symptoms of Society”, Guangdong (Guangzhou) Museum of Art and Zhejiang (Hangzhou) Museum of Art, China; in 2016 “Cold Wind from the Balkans”, PERA Museum, Istanbul; “Low Budget Utopias”, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; in 2015 “Grammar of Freedom”, MCA Garage, Moscow, “Inside Out”, City Gallery, Ljubljana, and “Art for Change 1985-2015”, City Art Gallery, Sofia; in 2014 “Disconsent” at the Ancient Bath, Plovdiv; in 2013 “Economics in Art”, MOCAK, Cracow, Poland; in 2012 “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times”, 1st Biennial, Kiev, and “The Eye Never Sees Itself”, 2nd Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg, Russia; and in 2011 “The Global Contemporary”, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany as well as many others.

The artist was awarded the Grand Prix for his participation in the exhibition “Onufri’98. Permanent Instability” at the National Gallery of Art, Tirana, Albania; and the Art Criticism Award of the UBA (Union of Bulgarian Artists) for 1989.