HiResidency with Lina Ivanova

Lina Ivanova is a Bulgarian artist and educator based in London, UK. 

Her practice is driven by a long-term investigation into the materiality of photography through experimental approaches, drawing analogies between photographic and sculptural processes. Deeply influenced by personal histories, social structures, and lived experiences, her work reflects on archival and pedagogical processes, interweaving her identity as a Bulgarian, immigrant, and teacher.

The site-specific nature of her work fosters dialogue with local communities, providing a space for reflection and grounding her practice in personal memory and spatial history.

Since 2016, Lina has been developing an ongoing project titled St. Clement of Ohrid, centered around an abandoned school in the village of Stezherovo, Bulgaria. Using found educational materials and working directly with the school building, she explores photography both as image and object. A core element of her practice involves re-contextualising these teaching resources - damaged film reels and 35mm slides - examining how time, politics, and social change have shifted their meaning. Through her installations, the work hovers between memory and knowledge, fact and fiction. Evoking architectural forms without directly replicating them, the works question the endurance of archives and the evolving role of learning spaces over time.