Header Image: Video Still from Swamp Song by Maria Nalbantova (Credit: Marin Kafedjiiski)
Congratulations to Maria Nalbantova, the WaterLANDS artist-in-residence for the Bulgarian Action Site at Dragoman Marsh. Maria has been selected to represent Bulgaria as part of an artist collective at the Venice Biennale this year.
The Venice Biennale is the most prestigious and longest running art biennial in the world. Each year countries select artists as their representatives to exhibit in ‘pavilions’ as part of the Biennale. This year there will be 99 national pavilions, running from May 9 to November 22, 2026.
The theme for this year is ‘In Minor Keys,’ curated by the late Koyo Kouoh. It explores quieter approaches to understanding and relating to the world as well as how artistic practices can catalyse new relations and possibilities.
Maria is part of the Bulgarian pavilion along with three other artists; Gery Georgieva, Rayna Teneva, and Veneta Androva. Their exhibition is conceived as the headquarters of a fictional research lab operating within a post sovereign, care oriented political imagination known as ‘The Federation of Minor Practices’. The curator is Martina Yordanova.
Image 1: Video Still from Swamp Song by Maria Nalbantova (Credit: Marin Kafedjiiski
Positioned slightly ahead of the present, the Pavilion looks back at the early 21st century as the moment when the conditions for this speculative political formation first became visible. From the perspective of an imagined future, the Pavilion is cast as a space where shared procedures of attention, care, and play began to assemble a post sovereign political imagination. The near past of the Federation is presented through four films created by the artists.
Maria Nalbantova’s contribution is called ‘Swamp Song’ and reflects her ongoing work at the Dragoman marsh, which has unfolded as a practice of ecological care, combining artistic research, environmental maintenance, and the recording of local human and non-human narratives.
Image 2: Swamp Song by Maria Nalbantova (Credit: Marin Kafedjiiski)
‘Swamp Song’ explores spaces that inhabit the contradictions between decay and bloom, disappearance and return. Maria says, “Dragoman Marsh is a mirror of a complex ecosystem reflecting socio-political processes like drainage and wildfires alongside acts of care and species restoration. In this unstable and liminal territory of water and land and a border of the EU, multiple intertwining micro-histories coexist”.
Filmed at the Dragoman Marsh, the work follows a specially composed ‘swamp song’ performed by the ‘Chepanka’ singing group from the ‘Dragoman 1925’ Community Centre. The female singers stand on a narrow bridge over the water like ancient figures with voices that are at once personal and communal, becoming the collective voice of the place.
Image 3: Video Still from Swamp Song by Maria Nalbantova (Credit: Marin Kafedjiiski)
The lyrics were written by Maria Nalbantova based on accounts from local residents and insights from conversations with experts from the BALKANI Wildlife Society and WWF Bulgaria engaged in wetland restoration. Individual voices thus merge into a choir in which human stories coexist with those of birds, plants, microorganisms and water cycles.
The work is a continuation of a long-term artistic engagement residency within the WaterLANDS project, where Nalbantova combines fieldwork and artistic research attentive to both human and more-than-human agencies.
More information here: https://bulgarianpavilionvenice.art/en
Image 4: Video Still from Swamp Song by Maria Nalbantova (Credit: Marin Kafedjiiski)
Image 5: Pictured from left: Gery Georgieva, Martina Yordanova, Rayna Teneva, Veneta Androva and Maria Nalbantova. Credit: Maximilian Pramatarov.
