Sarieva Gallery announces Pravdoliub Ivanov’s participation in Manifesta 16 Ruhr (2026)
Sarieva/Gallery is pleased to announce the participation of Bulgarian artist Pravdoliub Ivanov in Manifesta 16 Ruhr, one of Europe’s leading nomadic contemporary art biennials. The 2026 edition will take place across the Ruhr region in Germany from 21 June to 4 October 2026, activating twelve decommissioned post-war church buildings across the cities of Essen, Bochum, Duisburg, and Gelsenkirchen as sites for artistic and civic reimagination.
Manifesta 16 Ruhr brings together over 100 international artists and collectives, including 64 newly commissioned projects developed specifically for the architectural and social contexts of the Ruhr region. The biennial continues its long-standing focus on site-responsive artistic practice and the transformation of urban infrastructures into spaces for dialogue, community, and cultural experimentation.
Pravdoliub Ivanov – New Commission
For Manifesta 16 Ruhr, Pravdoliub Ivanov presents a newly commissioned site-specific work titled “Fever” (2025), created for a stained-glass intervention at St. Gertrude Church.
“Fever” responds to the architectural language of post-war modernist stained glass and its vertical systems of measurement and segmentation. Ivanov transforms this structure into a monumental thermometer—an everyday instrument reframed as a conceptual device for reading instability, vulnerability, and thresholds of change.
The work reflects on the fragile boundary between health and illness, control and loss of control, and extends a broader reference field in contemporary and historical art practices—from Duchamp and Jasper Johns to Fluxus and later conceptual strategies.
A temperature of 37.6°C, inscribed in the work, signals a state of moderate fever: neither stable nor critical, but open to transformation. In this condition, deterioration and recovery coexist as parallel possibilities, positioning instability as a productive state rather than a failure.
“If something is no longer itself, it could be anything,” the artist states, articulating the conceptual core of the work—identity as a fluctuating condition rather than a fixed form.
Curatorial Structure of Manifesta 16 Ruhr
The Artistic Team of Manifesta 16 Ruhr is led by Urban Creative Mediator Josep Bohigas and Public Programme Creative Mediator Gürsoy Doğtaş, under the direction of Hedwig Fijen. The biennial follows a polyvocal intergenerational model structured around three curatorial tandems working across the Ruhr region:
- In Bochum, curator Anda Rottenberg works in collaboration with Krzysztof Kosciuczuk.
- In Essen, René Block collaborates with Berlin-based curator Leonie Herweg.
- In Duisburg, Henry Meyric Hughes develops a major historical project reflecting on Europe’s transformations over the past 30 years, in collaboration with writer and curator Michael Kurtz.
This model emphasizes distributed authorship and localized curatorial production, with each tandem responsible for developing projects in dialogue with specific urban and architectural contexts.
About Manifesta
Manifesta is a nomadic European contemporary art biennial founded in 1996. It relocates every two years to a new European region, developing site-specific artistic and research-based programmes in response to local social, political, and architectural conditions.
The 2026 Ruhr edition focuses on the adaptive reuse of modernist and post-war church buildings, reactivating them as civic and cultural infrastructures for exhibitions, performances, and participatory projects.
On Pravdoliub Ivanov’s participation in Manifesta
This marks Ivanov’s third participation in Manifesta, following Manifesta 3 Ljubljana and Manifesta 14 Pristina. This marks a sustained long-term engagement with the Manifesta platform across different European geographies and institutional contexts.
Pravdoliub Ivanov (b. 1964, Plovdiv, Bulgaria) lives and works in Sofia. He graduated from the National Academy of Arts in Sofia and received a Doctor of Arts degree in 2015. In 1995 he became a founding member of the Institute of Contemporary Art – Sofia. Since 2010 he has been represented by Sarieva/Gallery.
Over the past three decades, Ivanov has established a strong international presence through participation in major biennials, museum exhibitions, and large-scale international projects. His work has been presented at the Istanbul Biennial 1995, Manifesta 3 Ljubljana, Sydney Biennial 2004, Berlin Biennial 2006, Venice Biennale 2007 Bulgarian Pavilion, and Manifesta 14 Pristina. With his participation in Manifesta 16 Ruhr, Ivanov joins Manifesta for the third time.
His work has also been included in significant international exhibitions at institutions such as Fridericianum in Kassel, Royal Academy of Arts in London, Boghossian Foundation in Brussels, Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Triennale di Milano, Neues Museum Nürnberg, and Kunstmuseum Ravensburg. In 2017 he participated in The Restless Earth at Triennale di Milano, curated by Massimiliano Gioni.
In 2019 Ivanov presented his first museum solo exhibition, The Life of Others is Somehow Easier, at Arsenal Gallery in Poland, curated by Monika Szewczyk.
Works by Ivanov are held in major international public and institutional collections, including Centre Pompidou, ERSTE Foundation Collection, Deutsche Telekom AG Art Collection Telekom, Deutsche Bank ArtWorks Collection, the European Investment Bank Collection, ARTER Museum Istanbul, and the National Art Gallery Sofia.
His work has been widely published in international art magazines including Frieze, Flash Art, Kunstforum, and Artforum. His work has been featured in major international publications including East Art Map, Show Time: The Most Influential Exhibitions of Contemporary Art, and Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 by Maja Fowkes and Reuben Fowkes (Thames & Hudson, 2020).
