Tsarino

After its gradual depopulation in the late 1970s, Tsarino disappeared from official maps. In recent years, this small village in the Eastern Rhodopes has been undergoing a gradual revival and has become a site for contemporary art in a rural setting amidst nature. Run by artists and volunteers, the Tsarino Foundation has been organising residencies, exhibitions, and other cultural activities in and around the village for over a decade. The foundation serves as a platform for exchange between the local community, the regional art scene, and the international contemporary art field, while actively restoring and maintaining Tsarino through the renovation of buildings and infrastructure. Great care is taken to remain faithful to the village’s original character and traditions, both in restoration work and in the design of new structures. Tsarino is an evolving and dynamic place. Although largely abandoned for more than forty years, it continues to transform — shaped by the foundation’s activities, the renewed involvement of the local community, and by nature itself, which steadily reclaims the land. Residencies in Tsarino offer artists, writers, and researchers the opportunity to live and work in an abandoned village setting, immersed in nature. Secluded in its own valley and shaped by distinct seasons, the village changes noticeably throughout the year. Staying here provides an authentic experience of the local rural culture and opportunities to interact with the surrounding community. Spending time in Tsarino often means adjusting one’s ways of living and working in response to its changing conditions and daily realities. For the foundation, hosting residencies and living and working alongside artists and volunteers has proven to be a joyful and stimulating way to explore what Tsarino is — and what it might become — both as a place and an idea. Tsarino AiR Group Residency 2026 Over four weeks, the village will become a living laboratory. Up to ten participants will be invited to explore Tsarino through its landscape and its role within the surrounding local community, using both as sources of inspiration and material to develop new work. One will find mossy stone walls, abandoned ruins and relics of the communist era, forests and fields, memories and stories, old and new spring-fed chesmas (drinking fountains), foragers and visiting neighbours, owls and tortoises, and countless cow paths leading one to unexpected places.