'Venus III' at the Bulgarian Pavilion at 61st La Biennale di Venezia

'Venus III' at the Bulgarian Pavilion at 61st La Biennale di Venezia
2026
A spoken word performance which slips between English and Bulgarian and occasionally into acapella song, performed by Gery Georgieva.

Modern day Venus, has had an out of body experience, she sees herself for the first time from above as a marble statue, limbless and inert. Is this a phenomenon sweeping the nation or a private identity crisis?

“The body е торба, the body is boundless, the body is a cosmic mass with orbiting moons of lipids. It drags its belly across the под and leaves traces of cells, cookies, прах, трохи , plastic packaging and tiny crescent shaped nail clippings. Her body is а гореща супа, but her wings will soon beat for the first time.”
Gery Georgieva, Venus 2026

We consider the fallacy of the body as an idealised image, committed to stone. The experience of being a body is also to be monstrous, to be messy, to be in motion, to be imperfect, to be changeable, to metamorphose, grow, wilt, burn, thrive. We go into a deep dive of sensations and shapes in the body, of organs and territories and how they relate to the natural world. The monologue starts as Venus questions whether her soul and body are one as she sees herself from above as a polished statue, but becomes a hallucinatory stream of imagery and thoughts, a soup of organs becomes a larva emerging as a butterfly, stretching out and feeling it’s wings beat for the first time. Venus becomes free of her own body as she finally soars.

Costume: SOS Skyn
Music: Gery Georgieva
Photography: Mihail Novakov

Made with the generous support of the Тhe Bulgarian Fund for Women (БФЖ)