First Monday Artist Talk - 1 February, 2021: Vera Hadzhiyska
Zoom Monday 1 February 2021 6.30 - 7.30pm
Zoom registration: at this link
FREE, open to all donations welcome
A Photo Fringe event in partnership with Fabrica
The winner of the latest In Between Gallery opportunity is Vera Hadzhiyska. The Fabrica Gallery open call in partnership with Photo Fringe, Spectrum and Loupe Magazine is to display work by emerging photographers in the temporary gallery in the Fabrica window space showing contemporary photography right in the heart of Brighton.
Vera's image Yellow Dress (2019) from the series With the Name of a Flower, will be displayed in the main Fabrica window on Duke Street from 25 January. To mark its launch, Vera will tell us more about her wider series.
With the Name of a Flower is a multi-disciplinary project investigating the forced name changes of the Muslim population in Bulgaria (from Arabic names to state-approved Slavic ones) in the period 1912 – 1989. "Vera was the name of my paternal grandmother who I was named after. However, she was called Ferde before I was born. A Muslim name she was forced to renounce and never use again. In the photograph you see, I am wearing a traditional dress that belonged to her in an attempt to commemorate the lives of countless people who were forced to change their names and experienced violence and trauma."
The Photo Fringe digital exhibition of the series can be viewed here on our festival website.
About Vera Hadzhiyska
Vera Hadzhiyska is a Bulgarian multi-disciplinary artist and curator based in England. She has an MA in Photography from the University of Portsmouth. Her practice is informed by the study of migration, cultural and national identity, history and collective memory. Her work begins autobiographically, tracing family narratives and shared traumas. Through the use of photography, archival documents, audio and video installations Hadzhiyska examines historical and political events in Bulgaria and their impact on people’s lives and identity. Her latest series With the Name of a Flower, investigates the forced name changes of the Muslim population in Bulgaria in the period 1912 – 1989.
All images ©Vera Hadzhiyska from the series, With the Name of a Flower