WÆ Æther Sofia are delighted and eager to bring to you our latest edition and common effort of 111 artists
SOFIA ART WEEK 8 — GENDERFICATION
October 15—25, 2025
Organised by Æther Sofia
In partnership with Doza Gallery & Krasno Selo Municipal Cultural Institute
The eighth edition of Sofia Art Week (SAW) turns its gaze toward two urgent forces shaping our present: gentrification and gender identity. Brought together, they form a new word — Genderfication.
This hybrid concept reflects the violence of erasure, the deepening inequalities between classes and genders, and the fragility of identity in a world where global processes of urban transformation unfold at overwhelming speed. At the same time, Genderfication stands as a gesture of resistance: a refusal to accept displacement, silencing, and exclusion.
Genocide and war as main critical point of humanity, where under the bare witnessing from our phones – we became complicit. The capitalist killing machine weaponising our bodies, extinguishing each attempt to raise and rebel. The digital fascist era is a fact.
Genderfication seeks to explore the intersections of gentrification, gender identity, and LGBTQ+ communities. It asks: how do processes of urban renewal and socio-political restructuring affect those already marginalized by society?
Through visual and experiential art, participating artists will investigate the power dynamics at play where gentrification and gender collide. The works will show how gentrification does not merely shift demographics or displace communities — it reshapes hierarchies, repositions identities, and disproportionately impacts gender-nonconforming individuals and marginalized groups.
The project aims to empower viewers to confront systemic forces of exclusion while also celebrating resilience, solidarity, and the ongoing struggle for self-determination.
Reclaiming Forgotten Spaces
This year, SAW proposes a double-fold event and symposium, unfolding both in established cultural venues and in neglected architectural sites across Sofia. Alongside galleries and art spaces, the festival will occupy ruins and abandoned structures — monuments heavy with history and memory.
Among them is the striking brutalist complex in Bankya, once the residence of Communist leader Todor Zhivkov. Such places embody contested histories of power, ideology, and decay. By activating these forgotten spaces, SAW8 highlights the urgent need to preserve cultural heritage, confront the fragility of memory, and question how history is carried forward in a rapidly gentrifying urban landscape.
Genderfication is envisioned as both a theoretical framework and a physical reclamation of space. Through multimedia installations, photography, video, and performance art, artists will stage interventions that mirror the shifting dynamics of gentrified neighborhoods.
Immersive environments will invite visitors to physically navigate dislocated, unstable terrains — spaces where belonging and displacement coexist, where communities are erased but also reinvented, where individuals must adapt and reassert identity.
These works transform art into a tool for dialogue, a way of negotiating the tension between old and new, exclusion and belonging, visibility and invisibility.
Gentrification is not only a process of class transformation; it is also deeply gendered. It reshapes how places are experienced and, in turn, how gender itself is constructed. As urban spaces are redefined for more affluent users, gendered relations are simultaneously renegotiated.
While scholarship has long acknowledged class dimensions of gentrification, the gendered aspects remain less understood. Since the 1980s, feminist interventions have shifted the debate — moving from analyzing women’s roles within gentrification to understanding gentrification as a process that actively constitutes gender.
This perspective emphasizes gender not as a fixed category but as a set of social relations structured by power. In this view, gentrification becomes a stage upon which identities, relations, and inequalities are continuously redefined.
A Fragile Present.Today, democracy itself is strained. Across the globe, violence and exclusion redefine social life. Bodies are weaponized, identities appropriated, and visibility denied by leaders who exercise power through erasure. Entire populations are left displaced, silenced, or rendered invisible.
At the same time, urban space has become an exclusive commodity. Global markets transform land into an “oasis” reserved for elites, a cycle of buying and reselling that ignores history, community, and belonging.
Against this backdrop, Genderfication insists on visibility, on resistance, and on reclaiming both physical and symbolic space.
In answering, we affirm that even in the face of displacement and erasure, resilience remains possible. Genderfication is both a critique and an act of defiance — a reimagining of identity, memory, and community in the spaces we inhabit.
SAW Sofia Art Week 8 – Genderfication
📅 15–25 October
🕒 Opening hours: 3–7pm (unless otherwise noted)
Wednesday, 15 Oct
6:00 pm – Opening Exhibition Genderfication 1
📍 Doza Gallery
Thursday, 16 Oct
5:00 pm – Talk: Kalas Liebfried & Voin de Voin, Presentation by Kiril Kirilov
📍 Doza Gallery
8:30 pm – Concert, Performances & Opening SAW Party
🎶 ELMA, BOSSY, Laura, Lola, and more
📍 Dom Club
Friday, 17 Oct
6:00 pm – Poetry as Resistance – Rituals
With Magdalena Petrova, Plexus, Poullo Occone
📍 Bankya Residency of Todor Jivkov
Saturday, 18 Oct
5:00 pm – Thematic Tour: The Secret Side Kvartal with Martina Stefanova
📍 Dom na Kinoto (Meeting Point)
Videnie with Kelley O’Brien
📍 Videnie space, Kuzman Shapkarov 9, Sofia
Sunday, 19 Oct
Opening Exhibition: Genderfication 2
Featuring 50 artists – Performances, Lectures, Interactions
📍 OKI Krasno Selo
(Running 19–25 Oct, 3–7pm. Closed Monday)
Tuesday, 21 Oct
7:00 pm – Opening Exhibition: SAW Invites Narrativa Gallery
📍 KO-OP
Wednesday, 22 Oct
4:00–10:00 pm – PALESTINE charity event
By Raja & Desislava Pancheva
Afternoon and evening filled with thrift market,vinyls, food, boos and more…
📍 Backyard Keva
5:00 pm – Artist Talks & Presentations
With Michaela Lakova, Madeleine Pearl Corcoran, Kelley O’Brien, Yasen Markov
📍 OKI Krasno Selo
Performance by Eleonora Edreva
Friday, 24 Oct
6:00 pm – Performance by Anton Vidokle
(in partnership with KO-OP)
Performance of Dorit Chrysler as part of the exhibition “Irradiation” of Anton Vidokle, curated by Martina Jordanova and Vasil Vladimirov
📍 National Gallery
Saturday, 25 Oct
7:00 pm – Film Screening Program + Talk with Filmmakers & Producers
🎥 Stefan Libiot, Katya Trichkova, Reni Grueva
📍 OKI Krasno Selo (Film Hall)
Closing Party
📍 Tell Me Bar
SAW Sofia Art Week 8 – Participants (Alphabetical Order)
Adriana Hristova
Aleksei Bachinskiy & Andrei Sarom
Alina Bliumis
Alice Rain
Anne de Vries
Antoanetta Marinov
Anton Vidokle
Armando Lulaj
Aurora d’Inanna
Axel Morel
Bianca Popa
Björk & Timothy Morton
Bossy
Callina Zaff
Chicks on Speed
Cristiano Codeço de Amorim
Daria Pugachova
Debatik
Desislava Pancheva
Diana Petrova
Dissociative Dreams
Eli Pencheva
Elisabeth Hacker
Elitsa Mateva
Elsa Okazaki
Eleonora Edreva
Erikmikail
Galina Dimitrova
Georgi Georgiev
Georgi Pavlov
Gergana Ivanova
Gergana Tabakova
Gertjan Franciscus
Goessi Marcus
Gogo6
Heerz Tooya
Hex Pixie & Zamyarski
Ina Shevchenko
Ira RZ
Iv Toshain & Anna Ceeh
Ivaylo Saraliysky
Jeff Bliumis
Jean-Marie Fahy
Jo Fetto
Johanna Van Overmeir
Johnathan Vidal
Julia Emslander
Jonathan Vidal
Kalas Liebfried
Karina Dobreva
Karine Fauchard
Karolina Pawelczyk
Katya Trichkova
Kelley O’Brien
Kinga Kielczynska
Kiril Kirilov
Laura Kerschbaumsteiner
Laura Sophie Riedl
Leo Williams
Liao Jiaming
Lina Tonev
Lora Rounevska
Lola Göller
Madeleine Pearl Corcoran
Magdalena Petrova
Malina Suliman
Mariana Tencheva
Marie Civikov
Martin Atanasov
Martina Stefanova
Masha Gyurova
Matheline Marmy
Messieurs Delmotte
Michaela Lakova
Mischa Badasyan
Narativa Gallery
Nia Pushkarova
nick von kleist
Nikola Andreev
The Nosez
Pauline Boudri & Renate Lorenz
Petar Pondev
Plexus
Poullo Oconne
Rachella Alcalay
Rada Mateva
Raja
Sandra Zanetti
Sara Christova
Sarah van Lamsweerde & Janneka van Raaphorst
Satardu Sovan
Selma Gültoprak
Seraphyne
Sergey Rozhin
Stefan Libiot
Streycat
Studio of Poetic Futures
Svetlana Mircheva
Svetli Evgeniev
Tobibi Bienz & Dana Ferrari
Unbothered by Society
Victor Stransky
Viktor Stoykov
Vmnotsafe
Voin de Voin
Yon Mars
Also check out other Arts events in Sofia, Exhibitions in Sofia, Workshops in Sofia.
