The new project of the distinguished fashion designer Mariela Gemisheva and her Fashion Art Center (FAC) presents a collection of clothes constructed from silk batiste, linen, velvet and bruchniks (pleated skirts) that form the basis of the traditional northern Bulgarian folk dress.
Mariela Gemisheva is known for her explorations into the boundaries of fashion. She presents these in the form of experimental fashion shows that are in fact performances with the participation of professional models as well as in the form of photo shoots dedicated to her own self. The “events” created by Mariela Gemisheva often happen in totally unexpected spaces. They count on the use of alternative means of expression such as demolished buildings and sculptural elements, thorn clothing and worn-out fireman’ uniforms, provocative unisex items and deconstructed pieces of underwear with distinct erotic appeal.
The project Old Fashion Fashion, season 2010 for the Sfumato stage is a mono spectacle by Maria Sylvester, which is camouflaging the fashion event. Gemisheva and the designers of FAC, Yelena Kesic and Boyan Petroushevski, are analyzing the relationship between the substance and the notion, the person and the camouflage, between fashion and theater. They are forcing the famous public personality to demonstrate her relationship with and attitudes for a set of 12 unique silhouettes, all classical and wearable pieces of clothing, in a very direct way – on stage, under the limelight and in front of the (un)initiated audience.
Sound: Dr. Feelgroov
Photography: Dimitar Dilkov
Hair Styles: Vassil Atanasov
Make up: Tzveti Hristova
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Mariela Gemisheva is known for her explorations into the boundaries of fashion. She presents these in the form of experimental fashion shows that are in fact performances with the participation of professional models as well as in the form of photo shoots dedicated to her own self. The “events” created by Mariela Gemisheva often happen in totally unexpected spaces. They count on the use of alternative means of expression such as demolished buildings and sculptural elements, thorn clothing and worn-out fireman’ uniforms, provocative unisex items and deconstructed pieces of underwear with distinct erotic appeal.
The project Old Fashion Fashion, season 2010 for the Sfumato stage is a mono spectacle by Maria Sylvester, which is camouflaging the fashion event. Gemisheva and the designers of FAC, Yelena Kesic and Boyan Petroushevski, are analyzing the relationship between the substance and the notion, the person and the camouflage, between fashion and theater. They are forcing the famous public personality to demonstrate her relationship with and attitudes for a set of 12 unique silhouettes, all classical and wearable pieces of clothing, in a very direct way – on stage, under the limelight and in front of the (un)initiated audience.
Sound: Dr. Feelgroov
Photography: Dimitar Dilkov
Hair Styles: Vassil Atanasov
Make up: Tzveti Hristova
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Costume designer for "SALOME", opera in one act by Richard Strauss, base on the play of Oskar Wilde in SOFIA OPERA AND BALET, Co-production with Central and East-European Music Theatre Association.
Photography: Aleksander Nishkov
Photography: Aleksander Nishkov
The challenge to go to Zürich and be provoked by the works of artists such as Sylvie Fleury and Pipilotti Rist…
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“Self-portrait”, the last project of the celebrated Bulgarian fashion designer Mariela Gemisheva presents a cycle of photographs documenting the radical transformation from white to black. The artist is positioning herself “on the other side” by taking the role of a model and posing for the camera of Alexander Nishkov, the fashion photographer. For the eye of the camera she is tearing apart the ephemeral veils of the wedding dress, this conventional symbol of innocence, tradition and the ritual of routine, in order to cloth herself in her own individuality – a black robe bearing the “Mariela Gemisheva” design label.
The two groups of photographs, the white and the black, are the result of a performance, which is located in the realm shared by the genres of documentary, studio and fashion photography. Undressing and dressing, just like in a palimpsest - the writing of a new text over an already existing one, are not treated as a mundane act of covering and uncovering. These signify the search and the discovery of the self, the emerging of the Female-Subject full of strength, armed with self-confidence and inner stability. Her body can not be subjugated or exploited, transformed or improved, because it is the embodiment of reality.
Mariela Gemisheva once again (after the photo cycle "Out of Myself", 2002), is using visual cliché typical for the current language of fashion representation. Within this familiar context the artist is striving to combine analytical conceptualism and radical aesthetics.
Iara Boubnova
Curator of the project
The two groups of photographs, the white and the black, are the result of a performance, which is located in the realm shared by the genres of documentary, studio and fashion photography. Undressing and dressing, just like in a palimpsest - the writing of a new text over an already existing one, are not treated as a mundane act of covering and uncovering. These signify the search and the discovery of the self, the emerging of the Female-Subject full of strength, armed with self-confidence and inner stability. Her body can not be subjugated or exploited, transformed or improved, because it is the embodiment of reality.
Mariela Gemisheva once again (after the photo cycle "Out of Myself", 2002), is using visual cliché typical for the current language of fashion representation. Within this familiar context the artist is striving to combine analytical conceptualism and radical aesthetics.
Iara Boubnova
Curator of the project
SPIDER HOUSE represents its Summer 2007 Collection of… parachutes. The designer’s class realized the idea and transformed parachutes into summer clothing, following the Gemisheva trademark for fashion and style. The Mariela Gemisheva brand stands for clothes that can think, clothes that work with symbols, and clothes that have the dual nature of being absent and present, being here and there, in and out of the body, and in and out of oneself.
The parachute pattern is also a cobweb. As it is magically turned into practical summer clothing, it retains a memory of the symbolic and dream-like meshwork of lines, figures, legends and feelings. The spiders are two fold creatures: they live in the corners of the house, on the edge of the visible space, and yet, they extend and open this space by spinning their webs on places abandoned.
The spiders are also creatures of symbols. They would weave into their shapely web the sun, the balance, the harmony they symbolize. They stand for fertility and carry predominantly female features.
A spider is the centre of the Earth, slowly parachuting down the air, descending as if coming from nowhere.
Vladya Mihaylova
The parachute pattern is also a cobweb. As it is magically turned into practical summer clothing, it retains a memory of the symbolic and dream-like meshwork of lines, figures, legends and feelings. The spiders are two fold creatures: they live in the corners of the house, on the edge of the visible space, and yet, they extend and open this space by spinning their webs on places abandoned.
The spiders are also creatures of symbols. They would weave into their shapely web the sun, the balance, the harmony they symbolize. They stand for fertility and carry predominantly female features.
A spider is the centre of the Earth, slowly parachuting down the air, descending as if coming from nowhere.
Vladya Mihaylova
CONTEMPLATION IN BLUE. LADY'S BOUDOIR IN THE COLORS OF WATER
Photography: Angel Tzvetanov
Photography: Angel Tzvetanov
On the eve of November 1st 2004 Mariela Gemisheva, the artist notorious for her radical interventions in Bulgarian fashion design, is presenting her performance titled "Fish Party". It happens in a small gallery space that is defined both as elitist and meant for a liberated contemporary actions.
Mariela Gemisheva is once again confronting the audience with her view on femininity. In her works as well as in life actually, the quintessence of the feminine is not only the body. The atmosphere, the symbolism, the tradition are all playing distinct roles... The artist is handling the whole spectrum of possibilities while braking it down to the “obvious” color, taste, and smell. Then she is adding the accessories that are actually metaphors – just think of her fish-related works. One of them started from a collection of ethnographic essays – the “Hello, Girls!” (1997) performance, another one – with fish in the hair (1998).
The fish, the real fish (and its smell) is now participating in the performance right from the invitation card. However, it leaves the materialization of the vulgar and erotic folklore, which claims that women smell of fish, and ends up in the frying pans of the dressed up models, these dream objects of the victorious contemporary femininity. What does Mariela Gemisheva actually want? The super-models becoming earthly creatures and serving frayed fish, or the fish becoming a constant accessory of haut-couture?
Photography: Dimitar Dilkov
Mariela Gemisheva is once again confronting the audience with her view on femininity. In her works as well as in life actually, the quintessence of the feminine is not only the body. The atmosphere, the symbolism, the tradition are all playing distinct roles... The artist is handling the whole spectrum of possibilities while braking it down to the “obvious” color, taste, and smell. Then she is adding the accessories that are actually metaphors – just think of her fish-related works. One of them started from a collection of ethnographic essays – the “Hello, Girls!” (1997) performance, another one – with fish in the hair (1998).
The fish, the real fish (and its smell) is now participating in the performance right from the invitation card. However, it leaves the materialization of the vulgar and erotic folklore, which claims that women smell of fish, and ends up in the frying pans of the dressed up models, these dream objects of the victorious contemporary femininity. What does Mariela Gemisheva actually want? The super-models becoming earthly creatures and serving frayed fish, or the fish becoming a constant accessory of haut-couture?
Photography: Dimitar Dilkov
Mariela Gemisheva works as an artist and fashion designer in Sofia, the city where she was born, in a society – that of Bulgaria – in which concepts such as glamour and fashion were alien for many years. And yet Mariela has turned this situation into an important opportunity to work on Fashion as an abstract concept, as pure expressive research, free of all prejudice. A world in which the final objective is not so much (or at least not only) the mass production and marketing of clothes. Her creations are in fact full critical analyses of the implicit codes of fashion and of its unspoken preconceptions.
Yet they always have all the wearability of “real” clothes, and indeed the artist has twice received the Golden Needle Award for avant-garde fashion from the Bulgarian Fashion Academy.
At the GAS Art Gallery, the artist is showing her Fashion Fire video installation, a performance put on in the courtyard of the Fire and Emergency Safety Service in Sofia.
The fashion show, which starts out as a normal parade of models on the catwalk (and the first model makes us think it will be no more than a routine show) gradually takes on a different overtone: with the same composure as during the show, and betraying only a slight indication of ironic maliciousness, they unveil themselves and throw their clothes (designed by Mariela) into the fire.
With this cathartic gesture, the artist focuses her attention – and the reference is clear in the subtitle of the video, The nice thing of one decent beauty queen – on the liberation of Fashion from the canons and unwritten rules that regulate its mechanisms.
In the intentions of the artist, the dress is no more than a supposition, a code to express the personality of the individual, a balanced compromise between freedom of expression and social conventions. When it no longer lives up to these premises, it is deprived of its function. For the artist, the garments in this collection, which are singularly romantic and coy, represent a model of womanhood that is now a thing of the past and yet still highly approved of by social codes: a model we must free ourselves from, both as a symbol and in practice.
From “art objects”, the models become “art subjects”, with their own autonomy – even as they carry out the will of the designer-artist – the young priestesses of a purifying rite: each one burns her dress as she personally deems fit.
Unlike Vanessa Beecroft’s feminine figures, which are dehumanised presences inspired by aestheticism and portrayed in aseptic, alienated poses, Mariela’s models express feelings of ironic rebellion and active refusal, by no means devoid of a certain dose of maliciousness. To some extent, they also regain possession of their femininity: they bashfully cover their breasts, so their nudity is not brazenly exhibited. In their act, played out to the sound of music, the ceremony of the fashion show takes place in reverse, accompanied by a conclusion that is equally symbolic and surreal: in the final appearance, when stepping out to the customary applause of the public, the designer burns the dress that had opened the parade. This is the most romantic and languorous – and the only one to have been initially spared – thus confirming the idea of a destructive yet liberating will. In her mock rescue by a fireman, it is herself that the artist ironically saves.
In the Out of Myself series of self-portraits, it is again the artist – in a shrewd realisation of her own ability to mutate – who bears witness to the infinite possibilities that Fashion. This is once again viewed as a potential means for expression that is free from regulations, conventions and rules imposed by society. A means that is conceded to the individual.
Elena Inchingolo
Paola Stropiana
Video stills: Kalin Serapionov
Yet they always have all the wearability of “real” clothes, and indeed the artist has twice received the Golden Needle Award for avant-garde fashion from the Bulgarian Fashion Academy.
At the GAS Art Gallery, the artist is showing her Fashion Fire video installation, a performance put on in the courtyard of the Fire and Emergency Safety Service in Sofia.
The fashion show, which starts out as a normal parade of models on the catwalk (and the first model makes us think it will be no more than a routine show) gradually takes on a different overtone: with the same composure as during the show, and betraying only a slight indication of ironic maliciousness, they unveil themselves and throw their clothes (designed by Mariela) into the fire.
With this cathartic gesture, the artist focuses her attention – and the reference is clear in the subtitle of the video, The nice thing of one decent beauty queen – on the liberation of Fashion from the canons and unwritten rules that regulate its mechanisms.
In the intentions of the artist, the dress is no more than a supposition, a code to express the personality of the individual, a balanced compromise between freedom of expression and social conventions. When it no longer lives up to these premises, it is deprived of its function. For the artist, the garments in this collection, which are singularly romantic and coy, represent a model of womanhood that is now a thing of the past and yet still highly approved of by social codes: a model we must free ourselves from, both as a symbol and in practice.
From “art objects”, the models become “art subjects”, with their own autonomy – even as they carry out the will of the designer-artist – the young priestesses of a purifying rite: each one burns her dress as she personally deems fit.
Unlike Vanessa Beecroft’s feminine figures, which are dehumanised presences inspired by aestheticism and portrayed in aseptic, alienated poses, Mariela’s models express feelings of ironic rebellion and active refusal, by no means devoid of a certain dose of maliciousness. To some extent, they also regain possession of their femininity: they bashfully cover their breasts, so their nudity is not brazenly exhibited. In their act, played out to the sound of music, the ceremony of the fashion show takes place in reverse, accompanied by a conclusion that is equally symbolic and surreal: in the final appearance, when stepping out to the customary applause of the public, the designer burns the dress that had opened the parade. This is the most romantic and languorous – and the only one to have been initially spared – thus confirming the idea of a destructive yet liberating will. In her mock rescue by a fireman, it is herself that the artist ironically saves.
In the Out of Myself series of self-portraits, it is again the artist – in a shrewd realisation of her own ability to mutate – who bears witness to the infinite possibilities that Fashion. This is once again viewed as a potential means for expression that is free from regulations, conventions and rules imposed by society. A means that is conceded to the individual.
Elena Inchingolo
Paola Stropiana
Video stills: Kalin Serapionov
It’s hard to understand women… It is hard for man as well as for women themselves… It is even harder to understand artists… Thus, to understand a female artist is doubly hard. On top of that, the artist Mariela Gemisheva is a fashion designer… And fashion is about personality expressed through clothing. The premise is that cloths are an adjustment to personality because cloths are masks. There are endless possible variations of personality through clothing. But how to express a personality that is hard to understand to begin with? The personality of a female artist of fashion design who is used to using other people to express her vision and ultimately, personality? The other people are the models in a fashion show. They are adjusting their own personalities in order to reveal the “personality” of the cloths they are presenting to the public and thus are expressing the personality of the artist who has designed the cloths… Here the equation becomes much too complicated.
To make things easier Mariela Gemisheva establishes collaborative partnership with the male gaze, personified in the artist/photographer Danail Shturbanov, in the newest project “Out of Myself”. Theory says that the male gaze is an oppressive instrument of patriarchal signification even when used as a tool for identification through reflection. Here it becomes a constructive instrument for portraiture of a personality that is the process of finding out about herself. The male gaze here is not just reflecting but is constructing the personality of the “model”. Not only that, Mariela has “offered” herself as a model to the male gaze of Danail Shturbanov and the male gaze is willingly imposing itself onto the submissive “model”... The creative interaction of these two partners, a voyeur and an exhibitionist (although one is never quite sure who is whom…), is molding out various characters and personalities that are marking the stages in a process of “going out of myself”. And while the female partner obviously has a hunger for trying out various personalities, the male partner is having a hard time to trigger, follow and ultimately, satisfy the never-ending shifts in the female guises.
When one is trying to understand women, people say, one is reaching the realization that women are multifaceted human beings, constantly shifting between different roles and “personalities”, constantly unsatisfied with who they are, with whatever, whoever and mainly with themselves… The woman, the unsatisfied female artist of fashion design, is wearing her own cloths that are meant for entirely different people, in order to satisfy her wish for clarity and stability of identity. And the drama is that she is failing… She doesn’t seem to be able to make up her mind about what she really is. But neither is able to do so the male gaze of the interacting photographer who is taking obvious pleasure in being “along for the ride” without making any final visual conclusions about the “model”. Is she the tramp, the she-boy, the wicked witch from the fairytales turned young, the femme fatale, the artist as a director, the visionary, the diva, the unmarried “housewife, the vamp, the water (fish) carrier from the history of art with the numberless paintings, the ugly duckling from still other fairytales, the anti-Paris or is she (rather, are they…?) just a player(s) in the game of difference and identity?
She doesn’t know but he doesn’t know either and the creative tension of this reciprocal insecurity has produced a splendidly baroque group of visual works. The video tape documenting the interactive photographing/modeling sessions of “going out of my(your)self” is as much part of the story as are the intricate make-up and hair-dressing interventions. At the end one is left convinced that “Out of Myself” becomes “out of thy-self, your-self, him/her-self” and all possible shades of interaction between the self and the other. It turns out that finding out about oneself is actually a group project, or how many people does Mariela Gemisheva need to find out who she actually is? Maybe all of us…?
Iara Boubnova
Luchezar Boyadjiev
To make things easier Mariela Gemisheva establishes collaborative partnership with the male gaze, personified in the artist/photographer Danail Shturbanov, in the newest project “Out of Myself”. Theory says that the male gaze is an oppressive instrument of patriarchal signification even when used as a tool for identification through reflection. Here it becomes a constructive instrument for portraiture of a personality that is the process of finding out about herself. The male gaze here is not just reflecting but is constructing the personality of the “model”. Not only that, Mariela has “offered” herself as a model to the male gaze of Danail Shturbanov and the male gaze is willingly imposing itself onto the submissive “model”... The creative interaction of these two partners, a voyeur and an exhibitionist (although one is never quite sure who is whom…), is molding out various characters and personalities that are marking the stages in a process of “going out of myself”. And while the female partner obviously has a hunger for trying out various personalities, the male partner is having a hard time to trigger, follow and ultimately, satisfy the never-ending shifts in the female guises.
When one is trying to understand women, people say, one is reaching the realization that women are multifaceted human beings, constantly shifting between different roles and “personalities”, constantly unsatisfied with who they are, with whatever, whoever and mainly with themselves… The woman, the unsatisfied female artist of fashion design, is wearing her own cloths that are meant for entirely different people, in order to satisfy her wish for clarity and stability of identity. And the drama is that she is failing… She doesn’t seem to be able to make up her mind about what she really is. But neither is able to do so the male gaze of the interacting photographer who is taking obvious pleasure in being “along for the ride” without making any final visual conclusions about the “model”. Is she the tramp, the she-boy, the wicked witch from the fairytales turned young, the femme fatale, the artist as a director, the visionary, the diva, the unmarried “housewife, the vamp, the water (fish) carrier from the history of art with the numberless paintings, the ugly duckling from still other fairytales, the anti-Paris or is she (rather, are they…?) just a player(s) in the game of difference and identity?
She doesn’t know but he doesn’t know either and the creative tension of this reciprocal insecurity has produced a splendidly baroque group of visual works. The video tape documenting the interactive photographing/modeling sessions of “going out of my(your)self” is as much part of the story as are the intricate make-up and hair-dressing interventions. At the end one is left convinced that “Out of Myself” becomes “out of thy-self, your-self, him/her-self” and all possible shades of interaction between the self and the other. It turns out that finding out about oneself is actually a group project, or how many people does Mariela Gemisheva need to find out who she actually is? Maybe all of us…?
Iara Boubnova
Luchezar Boyadjiev
An experimental fashion collection fpr 1998/99 concentrating on the lady's wedding dress. It is not interesting for me for its usual meaning - as a traditional costume at the end of a fashion show or as a mandatory uniform for a wedding ritual. The dress is necessary as a cult object, the way it exists in the minds of all women. The intervention in this dress constitutes a correction in its traditionality, which aims to challenge the sense of modernity just a year before year 2000. (M.G.)
Photography: Dimitar Dilkov
Photography: Dimitar Dilkov
CULTURE NEWSPAPER
Issue 44/2439, Year L
Neither a White Cube, nor a Black Box. History in Present Tense
Sofia Art Gallery
November 7 - December 3, 2006
"Hello girls" - the 1997 performance of Mariela Gemisheva inaugurates a new attitude to the woman in our society. In a way it is the retold version of a cynical anecdote about the blind man, who used to recognize women by their smell. The author makes the provocatively dressed top model with naked behind – the dream woman of every
man – to fry sprat in such a simplified way in a room, resembling a boudoir – the dream of every teen girl. The audience is not just invited to indulge in visual pleasure, so typical of art, but also to "consume" simultaneously, in order to interact further with culture in today's trendy way. In her latest installation the fashion designer changes again the traditional concept of ritual wear, such as bridal gowns – turning them into a doormat, inviting people from the dirty streets, to tramp on this symbol of purity and modesty.
Iara Boubnova
Photography: Valentina Petrova
Issue 44/2439, Year L
Neither a White Cube, nor a Black Box. History in Present Tense
Sofia Art Gallery
November 7 - December 3, 2006
"Hello girls" - the 1997 performance of Mariela Gemisheva inaugurates a new attitude to the woman in our society. In a way it is the retold version of a cynical anecdote about the blind man, who used to recognize women by their smell. The author makes the provocatively dressed top model with naked behind – the dream woman of every
man – to fry sprat in such a simplified way in a room, resembling a boudoir – the dream of every teen girl. The audience is not just invited to indulge in visual pleasure, so typical of art, but also to "consume" simultaneously, in order to interact further with culture in today's trendy way. In her latest installation the fashion designer changes again the traditional concept of ritual wear, such as bridal gowns – turning them into a doormat, inviting people from the dirty streets, to tramp on this symbol of purity and modesty.
Iara Boubnova
Photography: Valentina Petrova
