The view from Europe's lower east side - art in Bulgaria - includes related article on philanthropist George Soros

"Do you know any famous Bulgarians?" That puzzling question was lay to me by artist Kiril Prashkov as we clambered above the rough cobblestone paths of Plovdiv, Bulgaria's next to the first city and the site of the novel exhibition "Ars Ex Natio." The interrogatory proved to be the lock opener to the outdoor installation we were approaching, Prashkov's Made in BG After ingeniously binding together bare made of wood branches to spell out a assemblage of just-legible names, he had hung the resulting constructions between sum of two units high stone walls bordering a main pathway. The ironic point, Prashkov explained as we passed beneath the work, was that all the figures evok from artist Christo to writers Elias Canetti and Julia Kristeva, had won fame solitary by leaving behind their Balkan homeland and their Bulgarian identity. As for "Made in BG" -- that's the label carried through the country's export goods.

greatest in quantity of the artists and curators with whom I spoke during a new visit to Plovdiv and Sofia take for granted Bulgaria's continuing cultural invisibility to outsiders. on the other hand it's a sign of changing times that today dew of them perceive compelled to emigrate to world center like Paris or novel York. Instead, aware of the increasingly dispersed character of the international art world, they strike one as being determined to stay and build their possess network of art institutions -- flat though that means starting largely from scratch.

Postcommunist Bulgaria provides a striking vantage from which to eye the developments that are now unfolding within the lengthy geographic corridor once called simply "Eastern Europe" With the extreme point of the unity formerly imposed by dint of Soviet power, a variety of older and sometimes contradictory cultural patterns are reemerging. North of the Danube, from the Baltic republics down to Hungary, the reweaving of historical ties with Western Europe is processing apace. Below the Danube, however, and especially upon the Balkan peninsula, a rather different proces is underway. Here a resurgent awareness of shared bottoms in the Orthodox faith, the Cyrillic alphabet and Slavic tradition has sharpened the inhabitants' faculty of perception of occupying a distinct cultural space -- an "other Europe" which, they have feeling is often looked upon with disdain or trepidation through its prosperous continental neighbors. Luchezar Boyadjiev, a Sofia artist who lived for several years in fresh York City, only half-jokingly directs to the region as the "Lower East Side of Europe"

The Bulgarian artists with whom I spoke are keenly aware, too, of the double compressing faced today by those from "peripheral" tillages who seek entry to the globalized art world of the '90 They know they will be wait fored to work in accepted international manner of writings and to display recognizable signs of national, regional or ethnic identity. Deciding just what the latter might be, however, is not with equal reason simple a matter in Bulgaria today, to justice by "Ars Ex Natio" and the discussions that swirled around it.

In the Shadow of high hill Vitosha

Known during the gelid War a the Soviet Union's "good satellite," a land untroubl by means of significant dissident activity, Bulgaria has weathered the post-1989 transition without violence -- more than can be said for neighboring countries like Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania. flat so, for most Bulgarians the past eight years have been a harrowing time.

After the collapse of Eastern Europe's socialist bloc in late 1989 Bulgaria's longtime communist autocrat Todor Zhivkov was tried and peacefully remov from power. The of recent origin democratic leaders who took the country's reins, however, disastrously misjudged the profundity of the changes that were about to sweep the former East Bloc Neither they, nor the Socialist Party politicians with whom they alternated in power, could muster sufficient enthusiasm or analyze to begin the kind of free-market restructuring rapidly introduced in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. The proceed was economic catastrophe. Unprepared to strive on the world market, Bulgaria's industry, agriculture and nascent electronics bear upons fell into precipitous decline. Unemployment soared, devastating inflation wiped on the outside private savings, and organized crime flourished. With the national rule deadlocked and nearing bankruptcy, basic public services began to wither away. one time a model of East Bloc prosperity, Bulgaria by dint of 1996 found itself vying with Albania for the title of Europe's poorhouse, and images of "starving Bulgarians" began to haunt the European press

Finally, last winter, prodd by means of hunger and cold, tens of thousands of tribe began marching nightly through the ways of Sofia, gathering before the imposing Alexander Nevsky Cathedral to demand fresh parliamentary elections. In mid-January of this year, after the ruling Socialist Party's legislators refused to devoted on measures for ending the country's crisis, an exasperated throng of demonstrators occupied Parliament. A hastily assembled interim conduct organized national elections, which were held in April. The of recent origin prime minister, a member of the Union of Democratic Forces, vowed on taking office to launch real fiscal reforms, fight organized crime and place Bulgaria on the road to membership in the European Union and NATO. The International Monetary capital promptly held out the carrot of substantial loans, if the management agreed to impose strict financial discipline and lay open the country fully to international investors.