Artist Bio
Boryana Rusenova-Ina is a native of Bulgaria, her work focuses on the relationship between place and belonging within the landscape genre. She earned an M.A. in art, design, and architecture education from the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland and an M.F.A. in painting and drawing from The Ohio State University. Her work has been exhibited across Bulgaria including at venues like City Gallery Plovdiv and Credo Bonum Gallery’s new platform “Young Artists to Watch” curated by Bulgarian art critic Vesela Nozhorava. In addition, Boryana’s recent exhibitions in the U.S. include the 2021 Amarillo Biennial at the Amarillo Museum of Art in Texas and a solo exhibition at the Springfield Museum of Art in Ohio. Between 2011-2014, Boryana served as the vice president of Roy G Biv Gallery for Emerging Artists in Ohio, and she was a founding member of the Couchfire Art Collective. Recently she completed a fully funded residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in California. Currently, Boryana is an assistant professor of painting at Texas Tech University in Texas.
Artist Statement
My current project “You Speak English Too Well” is grounded in my formative experiences of learning English as a second language in post-communist Bulgaria. Back then writing was drawing and drawing was writing, and now they both have also become painting. I find the intersection between language and identity, and how the former signifies the latter, to be a constant source of curiosity. Most recently, this has been embodied in my young, bi-lingual children and their attempts at drawing out words. The impulse to assign meaning to their scribbles is a precursor to written language and language is another form of cultural capital. I see their marks as an expression of something that is not yet learned but in the process of becoming so. To preserve this state of flux, I copied their scribbles and early writings in a series of trompe l’oeil paintings titled “This Is the Way to Macke a Hart”. For me copying is a generative act; I copied to remind myself of the power of their uncontrived marks and of what comes before we become fully “set” into a sense of self and place. The shapes of mountains in the paintings are based on surveillance camera footage of Mt. Rushmore Memorial when the camera displaces the figures of the four presidents to randomly capture the edges of the mountain. Referencing Mt. Rushmore as only rocks and sky brings back associations to its previous history as a landscape not yet inscribed by a national ethos. Pairing these seemingly unrelated subjects together creates a space, both material and figurative, in which we can ruminate on the influence of a powerful symbol of national capital against a child’s developing awareness of self.
Checklist
This Is the Way to Macke a Hart (And the Top of Mt. Rushmore) VII, 2023
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48”x36”
This Is the Way to Macke a Hart (And the Top of Mt. Rushmore) I, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48”x36
This Is the Way to Macke a Hart (And the Top of Mt. Rushmore) VIII, 2023
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48”x32”
This Is the Way to Macke a Hart (And the Top of Mt. Rushmore) II, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48”x36”
This Is the Way to Macke a Hart (And the Top of Mt. Rushmore) III, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48”x36”
This Is the Way to Macke a Hart (And the Top of Mt. Rushmore) V, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48”x32”
This Is the Way to Macke a Hart (And the Top of Mt. Rushmore) VI, 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 48”x32”