Selected from 23 curatorial proposals, The Federation of Minor Practices by curator Martina Yordanova brings together, for the first time, an all-women collective of artists: Veneta Androva, Gery Georgieva, Maria Nalbantova, and Rayna Teneva. Together, they present a speculative, care-driven exploration of identity, ecology, technology, and collective futures.

The pavilion is conceived as the headquarters of a fictional research laboratory – a space suspended between present and future, structured around four films that draw on deeply personal and deeply political terrain. Visitors are invited to inhabit this laboratory not as passive observers, but as participants, engaging through a gamified environment that makes each visit a unique, evolving experience.

"A project that does not carry a certain amount of risk cannot touch the audience." — Martina Yordanova 

Each film approaches the pressing questions of our era from a distinct angle. Gery Georgieva's UWU Channel Radiance explores digital mythologies and gaming culture to examine how identity and belief are produced within networked environments. Veneta Androva's Spray and Pray investigates the infrastructures of disinformation, tracing how misinformation spreads across digital networks. Maria Nalbantova's Swamp Song meditates on ecological care and the entanglements of labour and the natural world. Rayna Teneva's Geography is Destiny – an 80-minute film – interrogates fixed and fluid identities, borders, and the politics of place.

Behind the vision stand curator Martina Yordanova and commissioner Dessislava Dimova (pictured above) – two leading voices shaping the international presence of Bulgarian contemporary culture today. Yordanova, curator at the National Gallery in Sofia and founder of the IATRUS Residency Programme, has long championed the idea that the curator's role is to create the conditions for connection – between artwork, audience, and shared imagination. Dimova described the project as "more than a pavilion" – a creative experience forged through collaboration and a shared commitment to making something genuinely new.

"This is not simply a women's project. It is an attempt to show the normality of a situation in which women create and lead a major international project." – Martina Yordanova, pavilion opening, May 7, 2026

This edition of the Venice Biennale carries the theme In Minor Keys – and few pavilions embody that spirit more fully than Bulgaria's. The word "minor" here is not diminutive; it is a declaration. Minor practices – acts of care, attention, repair, and play – are the very gestures through which new worlds become possible. The pavilion does not propose a future. It creates the conditions through which futures can emerge collectively, through attention, care, and shared imagination.

The Federation of Minor Practices is on view from May 9 to November 22, 2026, at Sala Tiziano, Centro Culturale Don Orione Artigianelli, Venice.

At ALL-U-RE, we celebrate the women redefining the future of art, fashion, and culture. To stand alongside this pavilion – its vision, its courage, its beauty – is exactly the kind of cultural conversation we exist to be part of.

 

Images: Mihail Novakov