GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDENT WITH HER FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION

15 December 2022

Yoanna Hristova – a second-year student majoring in Graphic Design at Varna Free University "Chernorizets Hrabar" has her first solo exhibition named Thirst/Jajda" on December 15, 2022, at 7:00 p.m. The exhibition is arranged in Amorpha Academy at 10 Dragan Tsankov Street in Varna. It includes drawings and paintings, book illustrations, some term assignments, pages from Yoanna's personal sketchbook. The exhibition reflects moments from her professional experience in recent years, as well as some very personal projects, full of emotion, which gather together memories, dreams and steps on the way to her spiritual growth.

Yoanna Hristova is a graduate of Fourth Frederic Joliot-Curie High School. In the period 2018 - 2022, she has three realized projects - a collection of poems with internal illustrations and two cover illustrations. She participated in the second edition of the Illustration Biennale in 2020 with two of her works.
She received an incentive award in the illustration competition for the book "Phoenix - The Temple of Life" by Elisaveta Loginova in 2021.

According to Yoanna, drawing is a way to describe what you feel, but without words. It seals memories, dreams, trials and small victories over yourself in your growth.

"For me, it's a thirst for finding answers to the countless questions that rage in Yoanna's eyes. A thirst to penetrate deeper and deeper into matter, or more precisely into non-matter, which is born at the tip of her pen, a conductor of shaggy or combed thoughts. I find in her an innate sense of nuance of black and white with very small, almost imperceptible amplitudes. Her works attract, absorb the eye, make you get incredibly close, make you almost put your nose in the glass, and there you discover more and more miniature worlds, each with its own different story," says Chief assistant Dr. Arch. Donika Kirova, who is a teacher to the student.

Several pictorial directions can be found in Yoanna's drawings: references to comic book characters, artistic illustrations to texts, experimentation with colour as a means of expression, etc. In all of them, the clarity of the forms and images, the clean line and the precise juxtaposition of the individual elements make an impression. Without these concepts being overly naturalistic or hyper-realistic despite their concreteness. A dose of surrealism creeps in, immersed in many clouds, rays, stars, air, air exactly.