ALISON COOLEY
Arts Writer

Past the velvet curtain at the entrance to Biliana Velkova’s MFA thesis exhibition, Biliana Velkova: The Musical, is a giant sign in glowing marquee lights proclaiming her name.

Like much of Velkova’s previous work, which focuses on mass media advertising and appropriation, the sign is bright, schmaltzy and fabulous. The gallery itself, however, is fairly bare, except for the stop-motion musical playing out in front of two lone theatre seats.  

    The musical itself is a sort of biopic; a journey through Velkova’s life in Bulgaria under Soviet rule and her immigration to Canada.

The musical as a medium came to Velkova thanks to an uncle who smuggled North American musicals to her as a child in Bulgaria. She notes that she had a fairly skewed vision of the West, growing up with Dolly Parton and Liza Manelli. Since, Velkova’s work as an artist has taken on this fascination with performance and spectacle.  

    “My process is quite performative,” Velkova explained. “I work with a medium according to the concept that I have. So I wanted to do a musical, which is a very performative medium, but I was unable to produce a large-scale musical… it had to be very simply executed. All I needed was a light box and a camera. So stop motion was a new process. A very time-consuming process.”Â 

    In March 2010, Velkova began to work on the animation for the musical. She also worked collaboratively with Lief Mosbaugh (formerly of the Saskatoon Symphony) to put together a musical score, with contributions from Olenka Krakus (of Olenka and the Autumn Lovers), as well as Russian and Bulgarian folk music. The scenes she creates are bright and playful — a kitschy photo-collage come to life.  

    While the musical is fairly playful, verging on sentimental, it also tackles some more complex themes. Throughout the film, multiple cut-out Bilianas parade, first in communist Bulgaria and then in North American consumer culture.

While the soviet Bilianas wear matching sailor outfits, the later Bilianas don fantastic prom dresses and sing and dance like Broadway starlets. These Bilianas navigate between two worlds, mimicking at once communist and consumerist conformity, choreography and musical choruses, the simulated reality of mass media and the immigrant experience of being cut out from one’s home.  

    Velkova’s work strives to combine the flashy and the humourous with the serious.

“There’s a duality in my work,” Velkova said. “I want to tell a very important story but at the same time I’m always telling it through the language of kitsch and schmaltz.”  

    In the film, soviet monuments and red stars are replaced before our very eyes with icons of capitalist culture: MacDonald’s golden arches and bix box advertising.
“It’s also about the collective memory of communism,” Velkova explained. “My generation were teenagers when communism fell. For me, it was a moment where I physically saw history change. Almost overnight, communism was gone and replaced with MacDonald’s. For people who are growing up in Bulgaria now, it’s almost sad not to have that memory. In my mind, it’s peculiar to forget that past and I think we need to remember.”Â 
    Following through on the performative element of her work, Velkova created a media blitz around the musical, marketing it (and herself, its heroine, by extension) on campus and across Saskatoon. At her Sept. 9 closing reception, Velkova plans to imitate an opening night celebration, extending the performance into the gallery space and further blurring the lines between art, mass media and reality.  

Biliana Velkova: The Musical runs Aug. 30 to Sept. 10, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery. Closing reception is on Thursday, Sept. 9 at 8 p.m.