On December 3rd, at 6:00 p.m., the third edition of Sofia Queer Forum opens at the Academy Gallery, the National Academy of Art. This year it goes under the motto “Sweet Union” and is dedicated to the topic of the family. Curator of the current edition of the Forum is Vladiya Mihaylova.

Sofia Queer Forum is an initiative of the artist Boryana Rossa and the philosopher Stanimir Panayotov from the Collective for Social Interventions. It was created in 2012 and is connected with the study, by means of contemporary art, of the gender and sexuality as parallel systems through which we define ourselves and other people. The topic of this year’s Forum offers a wide platform for sharing different problems and perspectives. It suggests that the word „queer” (strange, odd) be used much more as an action, as a verb which is available to everybody to use, rather than as a definition or identity. The Forum traces the crossing points between the LGBTIQ issues and different problems inside the family ideal frame. It calls into doubt the daily, often clichéd concepts of “normality” and attempts to interpret the differences in the light of human rights, democracy and the personal, intimate understanding and notion of togetherness between people.  
           
Within Sofia Queer Forum 2015 you may see: "They will remember us in the future" – an exhibition featuring works of artists from Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, Russia, USA and Turkey, at the Academy Gallery, National Academy of Art; "Circus! My different family" at the fridge & Social Centre Xaspel - an open platform for participation and debates that addresses marginalized groups, people with limited access to cultural life, and those who feel themselves different and/or unrepresented in the public space. The programme includes also meetings and discussions with artists, lectures, screening of movies at the Red House Centre for Culture and Debate, the fridge & Social Centre Xaspel, Sofia City Art Gallery, etc. You may also visit the exhibition "Life - these are two women" starting on December 11^th at Vaska Emanouilova Gallery, which is dedicated to the image of the mother in line with the tradition of Bulgarian visual arts. 
 
Particular threads and themes that can be traced through the various events within the Forum are: the image of the mother and the issue of motherhood; the problems faced by intersex and transgender people; discrimination and lack of understanding of/about the differences at the institutional level and in everyday life, and the daily, sometimes indiscernible, forms of violence. These serious issues, however, are raised in terms of the understanding for a “human world”. They are visible in different images and stories about love, longing, desire, empathy, happiness and/or loneliness, which intertwine with the concepts of generations, cultural boundaries, communities, and economic, social and psychological conditions and ways of life of people.

 
For complete information about Sofia Queer Forum, please visit the webpage of the event: http://xaspel.net/queer/bg
Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sofia-Queer-Forum
Media partner of SQF is Marginalia website: http://www.marginalia.bg/
 
The main organizer of Sofia Queer Forum is the Collective for Social Interventions, supported by Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Sofia Queer Forum 2015 is supported also by the Embassy of the United States in Bulgaria, the National Culture Fund, the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award. It is carried out with the assistance of the National Academy of Art, Sofia City Art Gallery – Branch Gallery Vaska Emanouilova, and Red House Centre for Culture and Debate, as well as with the technical support of ArtExpress and MMCompany.