site.btaArtist and Architect Olympia Simopoulou Exhibits Fragments of Sofia and Venice

Architect and visual artist Olympia Simopoulou presents her solo exhibition "Sofia/Venice – Fragments of Belonging". It opens on January 15 at ONE Gallery in Sofia, the gallery announced on Monday.

The exhibition brings together two cities that the author considers her home, Sofia and Venice, exploring the themes of identity, memory, and belonging through visual fragments, textures, and layers of time, the announcement said.

"The works are constructed as spatial collages in which architectural details, urban surfaces, and traces of human presence intertwine in new, multi-layered images," the organizers of the exhibit said.

The project is the result of years of research into the urban landscape through the practice of unplanned journey, known as "derive", inspired by the Situationists. Simopoulou studies the city beyond its established image, collecting overlooked details, including facades, textures, and traces found in peripheral and forgotten spaces, which become the main visual material for the exhibition, the organizers explained.

“Venice and Sofia are like two different but equal voices. Venice speaks through the patina of time - erosion, decay, and continuity, while Sofia reveals itself as a city of constant transformation and contrast, where Byzantine, neoclassical, Soviet, and modernist architecture coexist and clash. Between these two cities, the exhibition builds a visual dialogue about how spaces shape our identity and how we, in turn, carry them within ourselves," the gallery team added.

Olympia Simopoulou is an architect and visual artist who graduated from the Architectural Association in London. She has worked and lived in London, Hamburg, and Singapore. For the past five years has been based in Venice, where she participates in projects related to the Venice Biennale of Architecture and Art. She has worked on exhibition projects for the Anish Kapoor Art Foundation and the LAS Art Foundation, and on national pavilions and installations for the 2025 Architecture Biennale. In 2024, she presented a solo exhibition in Montreal, Canada.