Programata

Broken videotapes, plastic bags, slices of bread, torn magazines and old poems, photos and drawings of hers. Such things can coexist inside one of the gloomy digital collages that Galina uploads to her Instagram. She often names them after songs because music is her muse (“I've been wandering between two bands for a while now - Godflesh and Brainiac).

Skulls, cats, robots, burning and melting things in impossible detail which you want to attack with a felt tip. Such drawings fill Simeon's Instagram, while in the future he imagines to do viral comics, short animations, clothing, stickers and street art.

After 3 years of studying Animation in London, the academic environment kind of made her hate it and drop it at the end - at least for now, Then she traveled the world for another 3 years, trying to be as sustainable as she can - she had little luggage, little money and slept in a tent and on people's couches a lot. All of this made Andreea (who's originally from Timisoara, Romania) a pretty flexible person.

It is only when we begin to question her about her life that we realize we have met her before - in our #InstaSofia section, where her Haus Porn project has been features a couple of times. In it, Milena draws footage and stories from Sofia neighborhoods: "I found this activity because of my dog, who had a lot of character and a lot of energy. I had to think of something," she explains.

He would not know 4 languages ​​today, nor appreciate academic knowledge had his family not moved to Luxembourg when he was a kid. However, the country turned out to be too organized and sterile for his liking, so he went to study Graphic Design in Brussels before finally returning to Sofia to continue in the same direction.

She knows she's good with the pencil since classmates started piling around her desk, asking her to draw them princesses and famous cartoon characters. Two art diplomas and years of design experience later the situation is "I draw because of joy, sadness, boredom, when there's something I want to say or when there's nothing to say, when I've just bought a new 6B pencil or I don't wanna throw away the wrapping paper with cool texture and color. "

Her life has always been flowing between two countries, but right now, "home" is the Alpine town of Annecy. After studying Mural Painting at the National Academy of Art is Sofia, she went on to pursue a second art diploma, and 5 years later she knows Annecy so well that she loves showing guests its secrets: from the best coffee to the top bike route.

"Sarcasm is always with me," she says. However, she's never kidding while choosing what to eat - she knows how and where real food comes from and has learnt to appreciate sustainability.

While she was studying Graphic art and Textile, she's an apprentice to a jeweller - in other words, it's been a while since she's mixing different genres in her work. You can now see her work until January 30th at the Astri gallery in Sofia (or in Sevlievo or at Largo in Varna), but before that, we stop her to show us some of her paintings more privately.

In her artist books, sometimes her handwriting looks like a drawing itself, and at other times you'll see a precise line telling a story.

She's not only watching films for the entertaintment - it's her way of learning about the world.

"I remember the day I decided to become a digital nomad; in fact, I remember all the days before that, when I was going crazy, that from 9 to 5 I'm supposed to stay in one place."

It's not a joke - every morning, Ivan Velichko and Ivan Vasin enter Shuka, a Moscow brand identity and graphic design studio where they act as creative directors. Inside, they draw the face of everything from T-shirts for Nike through Russia's largest shopping site to a chess championship in New York.

She likes to eat her breakfast in a jar, grows terrific tomatoes on her balcony and although she likes to write with many smilies, she'd rather hang out with her friends at a pub than on Facebook - because she has never had one.

She says she’s always thinking things through in advance, so she can hardly surprise herself. Her path does look quite logical even when looked from above – from a child she always had her nose between the covers, and even as she starts a drawing she already can’t wait to get to the next one, so she studies Book and Printing at the National Academy of Arts and continued with a master’s in Illustration in England.

She's picked up many languages (even Chinese) but she's even stronger with the visual stuff: her CV thus far revolves around graphic design, currently freelance, when whe's not accepting clients at Artelie: a small store on 44 Ekzarh Yosif Str. that concentrates the efforts of two families - Nikoleta, her husband, her sister and her sister's husband.