“The modern world is spinning fast and is gradually becoming naked of myths, while the soul continues to need its stories. So again and again art has to come back to the myth. The need to create myths doesn’t go away, despite the formulas that Logos gave us. Only Mythos can penetrate in the realm of life, death, and poetry, the realm of mysteries”.
Anna-Alexandra
Art has always perceived mythology as part of its aesthetic language. The inexhaustible reserve of themes, metaphors and symbols found in myths have lived in artists and poets across time with an endless source of inspiration, as well as with the challenge to not simply illustrate myths, but also to recreate them in an original light and through an individual language – responding to notions of man and the world.
Anna-Alexandra (1990) is part of this living tradition in contemporary art. She is a visual artist, poet, model, and muse, inspired by mythology, philosophy, and anthropology, which form the basis of her artistic explorations and performances. Her interest in cultures is rooted in her academic background in ancient languages and cultures, as well as in her understanding of the essence of life and of her own identity as a continuous act of creation.
An author and participant in multiple artistic projects related to poetry, fine art, visual performance and movies, Anna-Alexandra envelops her identity and art with the timeless and mysterious aura of the philosophical and aesthetic female origin. Born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria, she is currently based in Mallorca where the resplendent Mediterranean scenery and sense of immortality develops into an organic emotional and physical framework for her work: „I feel that Mallorca provides me the right context and conditions to create. For example, my last project LA MAR is about the feminine nature of the sea and about the female personifications of the water and was inspired by Mallorca, the sea and anthropological linguistic researches on Mediterranean poetry and myths”.
In her interpretation of Hesiod’s poem ‘Teogonia’ (Mythos, painting performance, 2019), in the movie Minotaurus (2020), in the series of masks thematically inspired by the search for identity (Masks) and in her poetry and paintings, Anna-Alexandra creates a special language of symbols, forms and characters, which engage the audience through subconscious, primal boundary-crossing imprints and associations: “For me art is more about a subconscious experience than the interpretation of an intellectual concept”.
Anna Alexandra’s work is cinematographic and dynamic, exploring the intersection between dreams and reality, thought and emotion, revelation and enigma. Her projects, paintings, masks, and photo sessions form a transitional space, a series of compositions that unfold from within one another. Fragmentary at a first sight, her work is consolidated on the one hand by texts – through poetry and citations that guide our attention to the intellectual and philosophical conceptions that inspire her – and on the other hand, by the palpable presence of the artist who never stirs away from the female origin and the pursuit of beauty, harmony, and coherence. Through her sizeable canvas paintings, she converts her body into part of her artistic apparatus. Through the interaction between body, material, colours and context, Anna-Alexandra re-interprets the ancient conceptions beauty, the magic of female nature and the connection with earth and eternity.
The archaic female figures, the papier-mâché masks and the collages become a part of Anna- Alexandra’s individual cosmology – an eternally evolving imaginary world, utopia that generates new artistic narratives. One of her last projects is a series of canvas paintings, in which the “brush” applying the paints, is another individual’s body : „My method is connected to the real interaction between my body and the canvas, paints and other materials. I would love people to feel emotionally connected to the content of my work.“
Text by Lidia Manolova