Artistic Portraits: Iva Gueorguieva

Ayşe Sarıoğlu traces the artistic practice shaped by time, memory and silence with artist Iva Gueorguieva.

Featured in Harper's Bazaar July 18, 2025 Culture & Art, by the writer and art critic Ayşe Sarıoğlu

Iva Gueorguieva, Kukeri: Birds, 2024, acrylic and gauze on canvas, 78 x 50"

Painting is not merely the arrangement of colors and shapes; it is also the bringing to surface of a body, a past, and a world. This interview reveals the artist's complex relationship not only with the canvas, but also with time, memory, and inner silence. We trace an artistic practice that speaks sometimes through brushstrokes, sometimes through silence. This intimate and intense conversation with the artist touches upon the very nature of painting, as well as the reasons for its creation: a world woven with traces of pain, migration, a mother's medical gauze, mathematical thought, and fragments of childhood light.

If my work resonates with the viewer—a pause, an introspection, a remembrance—then the cycle is complete. Because for me, art isn't a one-way narrative. In fact, it's often more about listening than telling. - Iva Gueorguieva

An artist's job isn't just to create surfaces; it's also to engage with the silence, the vibration, the fragility beneath the surface. This interview traces a voice that listens to that silence, one that doesn't verbalize it but makes it felt. Our time with the artist reminds us once again that art isn't just something to be seen, it's something to be heard.

To read the complete interview, please visit Harper's Bazaar