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ÅЛ NiK (alexandra nikolova)

@aaaalnik

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▲ i use visual art to bring things up 🫟
▲ open for international collabs & commissions
▲ [email protected]
👇 my new zine is here

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For a long time, I had a freelance practice but no artistic practice. I was making things, but without a system, nor a research process, and without really knowing how the two could work together.

My MFA in the Netherlands changed that. It showed me how artists actually structure their work and what artistic research is.

These 5 pillars are what I’ve built since then. Some took years to figure out, others I’m still refining.
I’m sharing them in case you’re somewhere in the middle of figuring out your own version.

Which one feels hardest to maintain? Let’s talk about it. by @aaaalnik

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3 months ago

When I sent my first art residency application, it took me two panicky days and got a very deserved no.

The second one took me an afternoon, because I already had the documents almost ready!

That’s the whole thing: many artists may miss opportunities because they don’t have a discovery system, and when they find something, the deadline is so soon that they cannot prepare everything on time (and with the best quality).

So this is the unglamorous part that we also need to talk about: the documents, prepared once, reused every time. And 15 minutes a week, so the open calls come to you instead of you remembering to look for them.

I built this system, and I am super happy to share it with you. Publishing and sharing is also part of my practice, a part I really love!

Super happy to share my knowledge of how to find funded opportunities and how to keep them in check:
Comment RITUAL, and I’ll send you the links to 1) the zine and 2) the applications tracker as a DM. 🤍 by @aaaalnik

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2 months ago

💬 Heyyyy all, most of you arrived here in the last few months. So, let me introduce myself again: hi, I’m Alexandra (my friends call me Alex).

I sign my work with Ål Nik (Åл Nik). That Λ is a Bulgarian Cyrillic “L”, and I love carrying my alphabet around with me.

I didn’t grow up making art professionally. I went back to school in my 30s: art history in Sofia, then experimental publishing in Rotterdam, because I had no idea how artists build a practice and I desperately wanted to find out. Eight years of youth projects across Europe later and an MA in Fine Art and Design, I make zines, illustrations, live drawings and games that get people talking about things they’d normally avoid.

Swipe for the longer version.

And, please, tell me in the comments: who are you, and what brought you here? I cannot wait to know a bit more about you. 💜

//// 🎛️ sound: my sonic artwork “Antwerp”, part of “Trains always bring you to the future” EP by @aaaalnik

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2 months ago

💭 I know that when things don’t go as we would like them to, and we face a series of struggles, it’s only a period of time, and it will pass. But when you are exhausted, it’s harder to deal with your anxiety.

With 2 months on the road, meeting lots of people, not having time to work long hours, and having the constant feeling that you have to spend every minute on quality time with friends and family (because you only have it NOW), you can get quite exhausted (recharged in many ways; completely worn out socially).

Then you get back to your routine, and you expect that it will become a nice routine immediately, but.. hey, it doesn’t - you’re tired, you stress out because you have a super long To-Do list and no energy to go through it; and on top of that, the guilt & anxiety that your f**king instagram is totally down because you don’t have time to create content all the time… Pffff.

This is a little reminder to get out of this toxic spiral of thoughts.
Reminder to myself, and to any of you who are going through this as well.

May the algorithm go to he**! 😅 by @aaaalnik

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a day ago

🔺I applied to 40 art opportunities and got accepted 4 times. (art residencies, funds, festivals, etc.)
For the longest time, rejections made me feel stupid, like a failure, and brought all those exhausting feelings.

Those generic emails sent to hundreds of people… can feel quite personal, even though I know they’re not.

So, I turned rejections into data: I started logging them. What it was, the deadline, what I sent, what came back, when. Seeing clearly how things are made me realise it’s not about me and my work, but how many other artists apply; how few the spots there are; and what kind of projects they are actually looking for.

Most of the residencies I applied to received between 250 and 3000 applications and accepted one to four artists. And the ones that said yes were either people who already knew my work, or calls where my proposal matched what they were actually looking for.

So, it turns out to be a matching problem, and a volume problem.

A rejection rate is a volume metric. Mine looks bad because I applied a lot, which is the same reason anything ever comes through at all. The more you try, the closer you are to a really great fit that can turn the tide completely. by @aaaalnik

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4 days ago

My first PICTOPLASMA x BALKANS just ended and I cannot wait for next year’s! I’ve been told how amazing that festival is, but in person, things are x10000 multiplied.

x wonderful crowd - met amazing people and made new friends;
x brilliant speakers - tons of inspiration from real people who are artists & shared their experience;
x perfect organisation - what a treasure the team behind it is;
x what a location - Varna is so beautiful and welcoming (especially in September), rediscovered that city & fell in love with it again.

THANK you for the invitation & the opportunity to be part of it! I will carry this experience and inspiration with me for a long time.

See you next year :*
@pictoplasma_balkans

#illustration #festival #pictoplasma #europe #balkans by @aaaalnik

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7 days ago

This week’s invitation is to take a different way home and observe it. Give yourself a little time to walk slowly, pay attention, and take notes. 👀

>> Take the long way home once this week. Note down what you encounter on the way.

Share your notes, a short poem, or a story that comes from this. We will love reading it 💙 by @aaaalnik

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7 days ago

I reread Audre Lorde’s “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” and once again was amazed by how poetic this short essay feels.

Her claim is so methodical: she describes an order of what we live through, then what we feel about it, then language, then an idea, then something we actually do. Audre reminds us that writing is where the thought gets created.

She wrote this in 1977, against the habit of trusting ideas alone and treating feeling as unserious. Reading it now, in the middle of the AI conversation, it feels uncanny how relevant it sounds.

Because the real risk is that so much of what we read today arrives without anyone having gone through the steps (and the thoughts) themself.

This is also why I don’t see art being a luxury: it is how what we feel turns into something we can act on.

The full piece is in this month’s art letter. Link in stories 💌 by @aaaalnik

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16 days ago

🙌🏻 I’m currently in the midst of exciting preparations for my next adventure: Pictoplasma x Balkans in Varna!

I will join the festival at two spots: the Pecha Kucha portfolio presentations & the design market on Sunday. You can come see some of my physical publications & artworks in real life, as they’re no longer available in my web shop.

Come by to meet up if you are around; or let me know if you’re planning to go, so we can hang out! ❤️

Very excited, very exciteeeed!

> 17-20 September, Varna
> check out the programme here: @pictoplasma_balkans by @aaaalnik

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14 days ago

There isn’t a single right answer to this question, we all have very different paths. But we can ask ourselves some questions that might help us find the answer for us.

I get this question a lot, so it’s time to talk about it.

Let’s have a chat here 💙 by @aaaalnik

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a month ago

💙 Getting support for our artistic practice is essential for it to grow. I am not speaking solely about the money, but the other opportunities that are out there.

When I started, art felt like an exclusive club, and I had no idea how to get in. So, I decided to try to find out how artists manage to support themselves. Here I speak about opportunities - getting into an art residency that is not an investment, and finding funded travel and meeting creative people around Europe.

I put my experience during the last 10 years into a digital zine - a practical guide for these two doors.

Maybe you’ve seen it already?
If you haven’t and are curious, comment DOORS, and I will send you the link.

The zine costs only €13, deliberately cheap and accessible for artists who are wondering how to find support and opportunities. by @aaaalnik

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19 days ago

👀 I couldn’t agree more with adrienne maree brown that attention is a rare and invaluable resource. She believes that wherever we direct it matters the most, and it is a political act. She has framed it as a strategy of refusing to feed power with attention: instead, we can starve it of focus in order to pour that energy into the communities and futures we actually want to build.

Most basically: whatever we pay attention to is what we can see, understand, and remember. If we want to do something, we need to direct our attention towards it, and it can only grow if we keep it there.

On the other hand, distraction is everywhere. We get constantly distracted by all sorts of stuff, and often we direct our attention to a chaotic sequence of invaluable things. This is the world we live in.

So this lovely quote is our daily reminder to direct our attention where it matters most. Why not think about what you want to grow next - focus on it for a while, and let’s see what happens! by @aaaalnik

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24 days ago