This autumn, DOT Sofia Art Collection continues the story of SOFIA STATION with a new large-scale project by the artistic duo Missirkov / Bogdanov. The Choir of the Women's Market is an audiovisual composition that explores the market and its many voices. Transforming real conversations and sounds into a musical composition, the installation creates a portrait of the Women's Market as a space of encounters, differences, and coexistence.
The exhibition is part of the long-term SOFIA STATION programme of DOT Sofia Art Collection and will be presented in the exhibition hall of DOT Sofia from 16 September to 10 October 2026, with free admission.
SOFIA STATION is a series of photographic exhibitions dedicated to exploring the diverse neighbourhood surrounding the Women's Market. In 2024, DOT Sofia Art Collection, with Art Director Vesselina Sarieva, presented SOFIA STATION ’70 for the first time—an exhibition of archival photographs by Panayot Barnev. In 2025, the series continued with SOFIA STATION: MARKET DAYS, a documentary project by journalist and photographer Konstantin Valkov.
Opening: 16 September (Wednesday), 18:00–20:00, with the artists in attendance
Artist-led tour: 19 September (Saturday), 14:00
Finissage: 10 October (Saturday), 13:00–18:00
Following its archival photographic explorations of the area surrounding the Women's Market, SOFIA STATION continues with a new project by the artistic duo Missirkov / Bogdanov. The Choir of the Women's Market is an audiovisual composition that explores the market's polyphony - its voices, languages, and everyday stories. By transforming real conversations and sounds into a musical composition, the project creates a portrait of the Women's Market as a space of encounters, differences, and coexistence. The exhibition is part of the long-term SOFIA STATION programme of DOT Sofia Art Collection and will be presented at DOT Sofia from 16 September to 10 October.
DOT Sofia Art Collection is pleased to present the third exhibition in its SOFIA STATION series - a project launched in 2024 that explores the cultural memory and contemporary identity of the area surrounding DOT Sofia: Old Sofia, Vazrazhdane District, and its heart, the Women's Market.
Following the archival photographic research presented in the previous editions, this year's project takes the series in a new direction with a large-scale artistic intervention by the duo Missirkov / Bogdanov.
Invited by DOT Sofia Art Collection curator Vesselina Sarieva in 2024, the artists have developed a project that had been seeking its realisation for several years. The Choir of the Women's Market is a large-scale audiovisual composition inspired by one of the market's most distinctive characteristics: its polyphony.
Every walk through the Women's Market leads through a kind of sonic labyrinth: endless phone conversations, voices speaking different languages, everyday stories, fragments of overheard sentences, and the rhythm of urban life. This seemingly ordinary everyday phenomenon becomes the starting point for Missirkov and Bogdanov's artistic work. From what initially appears to be noise, they create a musical composition - a contemporary form of miniature oratorio - in which speech gradually transforms into music.
The installation comprises 50 video screens, compositionally arranged like a cloud across one of the exhibition space's walls. On each screen, viewers encounter one of the market's characters - vendors, barbers, butchers, craftspeople, migrants, and local residents. They speak or sing directly to the camera, as if engaged in a video conversation with an unseen interlocutor.
The sound composition begins as a chaotic polyphony, with each person speaking in their own language and telling their own story. Gradually, rhythm begins to emerge from the apparent disorder: individual words are repeated, voices become synchronised, and eventually merge into a shared melody.
The composition incorporates motifs from songs associated with the different communities living in the area—melodies connected to migration, home, separation, and hope. Drawing on these musical themes, the project's composer creates an original work, a kind of “Anthem of the Women's Market,” symbolically bringing all the participants together.
Alongside the video installation, a graphic map provides information about each participant, including their name, age, and profession. On the opposite wall, viewers encounter a drone-shot time-lapse of the market, in which streams of people form a kind of living organism, while light animations trace individual voices in synchrony with the sound composition.
The project brings together an interdisciplinary team working across visual art, music, technology, and field research. Kaloyan Dimitrov is the composer and sound editor; Aleksandar Rizov is responsible for programming and technical realisation; Teodora Niforu conducted the research and field coordination; and Neda Milanova is the project manager.
The Choir of the Women's Market is both a document and an artistic interpretation of one of Sofia's most vibrant public spaces. The project transforms everyday conversations into music and chance human encounters into a collective choir that tells the story of the contemporary city.
About the Artists
Boris Missirkov (b. 1971, Sofia) and Georgi Bogdanov (b. 1971, Varna) have worked exclusively as a creative duo for more than two decades. They graduated from the National High School of Ancient Languages and Cultures, the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts (NATFA), and the experimental centre FABRICA in Italy.
They are photographers, visual artists, cinematographers, and directors, as well as co-founders of the Bulgarian Photographic Association and the production company AGITPROP. Alongside their photographic practice, they have created numerous documentary films, experimental videos, and visual campaigns, and have curated a number of exhibitions dedicated to contemporary Bulgarian photography.
Their works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, the Museum of Photographic Art in Odense, the National Art Gallery, Sofia City Art Gallery, the National Library of France, as well as Erste Bank, UniCredit, and the European Parliament.
Art historian Walter Seidl has described their practice as a form of “staged documentary,” which simultaneously documents and interprets the social reality of post-socialist Bulgaria.
About DOT Sofia Art Collection
DOT Sofia Art Collection is a private collection dedicated to contemporary Bulgarian art, featuring iconic works by both established and emerging artists. Comprising more than 200 works, the collection draws inspiration from humour, the melancholic depth of the Bulgarian spirit, and everyday themes in Bulgaria and around the world.
The works explore the possibility of empathy and the joy of coexistence in a world marked by social, ethnic, political, and ethical tensions and contrasts. DOT Sofia's annual programme also includes photographic and archival projects documenting the Women's Market, as well as cultural events developed in collaboration with Sarieva/Gallery, open to art enthusiasts and to those curious to discover something new.
The exhibition “The Women’s Market Choir” is a production by AGITPROP.
The project is realised with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria.
