E-mail:
contact {at} marianalbantova.com

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www.marianalbantova.com
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Maria @ vimeo.com

ARTE Twist Episode “Schamlos glücklich?”
(22:44 min, English subtitles available)
Open Art Files

Maria Nalbantova (b. 1990, Sofia, Bulgaria) is an artist working across various media, including sculpture, DIY bio-materials, video, and drawing. She creates mixed-media installations, often in dialogue with specific locations, engaging with their historical, socio-political, and ecological dimensions. Central to her practice is storytelling, she explores the entanglements between human societies and their environments by constructing speculative realities where collected oral stories, archives, and interdisciplinary research intertwine with imagination and contemporary mythologies. Her work centers on notions of coexistence, care, and responsibility.

In 2025, Maria Nalbantova took part in the “Silk Road: Artists’ Rendezvous – International Artists’ Silk Road Field Residency in China”, hosted by the China Academy of Art, field research across the Hexi Corridor in Gansu and in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. In 2024, she exhibited at viennacontemporary with Sarieva Gallery in Vienna, Austria, and was involved in the Art & Science Residency FusionAIR 2024 in Bucharest, Romania, as well as the feralAIR program at Schmiede in Hallein, Austria. In early 2023 she was selected for the WaterLANDS Artistic Engagement Residency, funded by the EU Horizon program – a four-years project at Dragoman Marsh in Bulgaria, one of the six wetland Action Sites. She also participated in the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, Romania, curated by Adrian Notz.

Maria Nalbantova participated in two of the exhibitions of the traveling biennale “Manifesta 14” in Prishtina, Kosovo - the group exhibition “Self-Splaining (Triumph of Empathy)” organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art - Sofia, as well as in the “Center for Narrative Practice” through the invitation of the OGMS Gallery. In September 2022, she participated in the Media Arts Festival “Schmiede”, Hallein, Austria. In August 2022, she participated in the international residency “Art and Science Varna” vol.1. hosted by ReBonkers, Varna, Bulgaria. In March-April 2022, she was an artist in residence at Residency Unlimited in New York as a winner of the BAZA Award for contemporary art (Bulgaria) in 2020. In 2021 she was granted a scholarship at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria. At the beginning of 2020 she was selected by the Sariev Gallery in Plovdiv (BG) after an open call, to transform the gallery space into her studio for a month, resulting in her solo exhibition “hybrid-pure”. She won the special young visual artist award of Stoyan Kambarev Foundation in 2020.

Her works are included in the collections of the Contemporary Art Collection of the European Parliament, the China International Culture Association, the Sofia City Art Gallery, and several private collections.

Her solo shows include: “Swamping” (2025), Curator: Lyuben Domozetski, Little Bird Place Gallery, Sofia, BG; “Paradise Marsh” (2023), Curator: Martina Yordanova, National Gallery, Kvadrat 500, BG; “Foxtail” (2023), Curator: Dimitar Kenarov, KO-OP, Sofia, BG; “Landscapes per Meter” (2023), Curator: Luchezar Boyadjiev, Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia, BG; “Bookmarks (Sofia)” (2022), curated by Dimiter Kenarov, Capital library and Center for Contemporary Arts “Toplocentrala”, BG; "Tracing the Hidden Memories - Bookmarks (New York)" (2022), curated by Maryam Ghoreishi, Residency Unlimited, New York; US; "Post-tools" (2021-2022), curated by Viktoria Draganova, foryouandyourcustomers, Sofia, BG; "A Good Deal" (2021), UniCredit Studio, Sofia, BG; "Drought" (2021), Intro Gallery, Sofia, BG; "hybrid-pure" (2020), Sariev Gallery, Plovdiv, BG; "Weather Forecast" (2018), curated by Daniela Radeva, Vaska Emanouilova Gallery, Sofia, BG

Selected recent group exhibitions include: “Memories of the Future” (2025), Curator: Iara Boubnova, Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia, BG; “Endless Mountains: My Story with the Silk Road” (2025), International art exchange exhibition, Dunhuang, China; “Shame and Guilt” (Scham und Schuld) (2024), Curator: Galina Dimitrova-Dimova, Bulgarian Cultural Institute (BKI in Deutschland), Berlin, DE; “Biophilia-Technophilia” (2024), FusionAIR 2024, Curator: Raluca Oancea Nestor, /SAC Gallery, Bucharest, RO; viennacontemporary (2024), Sarieva Gallery, Messe Wien Halle D, Vienna, АТ; “Shame and Guilt” (2024), Curator: Galina Dimitrova-Dimova, Vaska Emanuilova Gallery, Sofia, BG; “HOME 2124” (2024), Curator: Dimitar Solakov, ReBonkers, Varna, BG; “Ego-system / Eco-system” (2024), Curator: Iara Boubnova, Varna City Art Gallery, BG; “Portable museum of rebellious art: ‘W(e) A(re) R(ebellious)’” (2024), Curator: Antoni Rayzhekov, Structura Gallery, BG; “Silk Road Artists’ Rendezvous” (2023), organised by the China International Culture Association, Hangzhou, China; Contemporary Art in the Collection of the European Parliament - Nominated artworks (2023), Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery, Sofia, BG; “natura naturata” (2023), part of “LOOK – Ecology and Technology”, Curator: Stanimir Stoyanov, Charta Gallery, Sofia, BG; “New Ecologies” (2023), Curator: Viktoria Draganova, Swimming Pool, Sofia, BG; Art Encounters Biennial (2023), My Rhino is Not a Myth, Curator: Adrian Notz, Timisoara, RO; "BUNKER 22" (2022), curated by Liana Dimitrova, Ralitsa Gerasimova, Christo Kuzmanov, 59 Rivoli, Paris, France;“Self-Splaining (Triumph of Empathy)” (2022), organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art - Sofia as a partner in the Western Balkans Project of Manifesta 14, Gallery of the Faculty of Arts, Prishtina, Kosovo; Participant in an exhibition organized by the OGMS Gallery (2022), “Center for Narrative Practice”, Manifesta 14, Prishtina, Kosovo; "Over the past year" (2022), Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery, Sofia, BG; “Spontaneous connections between unrelated phenomena, Exhibition of the 2008-2021 BAZA award winners” (2022), curated by Marina Slavova, Structura Gallery, Sofia, BG; "Sedimentation" (2021), curated by Veronika Čechová, AVU Gallery, Prague, CZ; "US and THEM" (2021), curated by Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher, Kapanа Gallery, Plovdiv, BG; "In Defence of Solid Material" (2021), curated by Vesselina Sarieva, Sarieva Gallery, Plovdiv, BG; "The Possible Institution" (2021), curated by Viktoria Draganova, Swimming Pool, Sofia, BG; "The herbarium as a place for storing ideas" (2021), curated by Irina Batkova, Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art, National Gallery, Sofia, BG; "InSitu-Institute" (2020), Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia; "ReForget Your Past" (2019), curated by Nikola Mihov, Contemporary space, Varna; "Good Mirrors Are Not Cheap" (2019), curated by Chiara Cartuccia, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria; "The Goods of Time" (2019), curated by Anastasya Skvortsova, Goethe-Institut Bulgaria; "Interconnection: On Bodies of Water" (2019), curated by Veronika Čechová and Tereza Jindrová, Swimming Pool - Sofia, BG.