Collect the Market

Ina Valentinova (b. 1995, Ruse) is a contemporary artist, teacher and art therapist. In her creative experience, she combines the language of contemporary art with alternative socio-pedagogical approaches in order to introduce marginalized groups to the world of art. Ina uses learning through play, involving audiences in the creation of personal artworks and techniques from gallery and museum pedagogy as keys to understanding main elements of 21st century art such as humour, metaphor, symbol and more.

Punta Gallery was founded in 2021 in Sofia, Bulgaria. It focuses on installation and deconstructed art that is not usually put on walls, but through the use of subversive aesthetics, media and approaches offers artists the opportunity for broad creativity and experimentation. The space shares a common program with POSTA SPACE – a project space located in a storefront on the capital’s Central Avenue that emerged during the pandemic as a reaction to the restrictions with exhibitions that can only be viewed from the outside. As of November 2024 Punta Gallery changed its address and moved to Sofia’s Women’s Market, the oldest functioning market in the capital, which dates back to Ottoman times. The curatorial theme for 2025 is titled Market of Desires – an overarching theme covering a wide range of issues – capitalist realism and its impact on traditional culture and communities, shops as a mirror of the times and the desires of the people who inhabit them, and the market as part of the ecology of the city.