Vesela Stanoeva (she/her) is a digital artist, scenographer, researcher and curator. She creates speculative worlds, mesmerising gaming experiences, immersive installations and performances. Using moving image, CGI, gaming software, installation, virtual and augmented reality, she fuses the physical and digital.
The focus of her artistic work is the exploration of identity issues and their manifestations. With her artworks, Stanoeva takes up the uncertain future of the postanthropocene – a new epoch defined by technology and transhuman beings such as cyborgs. This gives rise to surreal artistic (nightmare) dream worlds.
From September 2020 to February 2021, Stanoeva was a fellow at the Academy for Theatre and Digital in Dortmund, where she investigated digital rituals and emotional responses of human and non-human encounters. In 2021, she then co-curated the immersive and interactive exhibition “Welcome to Paradise” at the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, whose visitors encountered new forms of spirituality, digital rituals and virtual corporeality as they engaged with the artistic works.
Stanoeva has presented her works in numerous museums, including the Lichtkunstmuseum Unna and the NRW Forum Düsseldorf. In addition, her works have been shown at various festivals, including VRHAM! 2021, Next-Level Festival for Games 2021 and NEW NOW Festival for Digital Arts 2021. Stanoeva is a PhD student at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund, where she explores new forms of collective world-building and multi-sensory storytelling as a prefigurative practice, extending and testing the concept of emergent and temporary realities between fiction and primary reality.
Stanoeva has received notable media art awards for her work, including the Digital Dramaturgy Award 2021 and the Science Communication – Communication in Science Award from Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts. She has also been nominated for the Female Digital Artist Award of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2022.
Vesela Stanoeva (born 1989) lives in Dortmund.
© Image Katja Illner
