Pepa Ivanova is an artist and researcher based in Brussels. She holds a PhD in the arts from LUCA, School of Arts and KU Leuven (2024). She is a HISK, Ghent Laureate (2017), she holds an Advanced Master’s in Arts from LUCA, Brussels (2013), and an MA in Sculpture at the Royal Academy, Antwerp. She studied Porcelain and Glass Design at the National Art Academy, Sofia.
In her practice, she questions the epistemological values of scientific, observational data and modes of knowledge production in art-science collaborations. Working across digital technologies, customised electronics, sound, performance, living matter, and materials such as porcelain and glass, she creates installations that unfold narratives through objects, light, and sound.
During her doctoral research, she reimagined an ecology of sun-earth cohabitation through electromagnetic frequencies, a theme that echoes in her present work on transitioning biomes. Pepa’s ongoing research on sun-earth cohabitation and the autopoietics of observational data was part of the objectives of her PhD (An Echo of the Sun) at KU Leuven / Luca School of Arts, Ghent. Several of the resulting artworks (WARMTH, PEL, DECAY, Bank of Plants) were produced with the support of KIKK, Namur, and funded by the Wallonia-Brussels Government, Belgium. In her practice, she collaborates with artists, scientists and engineers. During her PhD, she led educational courses on mixed media and art-science.
At present, she looks at the interconnected factors in balancing a marine ecosystem, diving into the Black Sea’s polluted depths and wanders in the culinary ethnologies on its shores. She writes recipes for adapting and surviving through mutation and polyphonic cosmic songs.
Projects in progress
Eat That Invasion, on metabolising pollution and culinary ethnographies, TIDAL ArtS, Lighthouse artist in the Black Sea region, Aug. 2025 – June 2026
Cosmic A-ray-ias, singing the cosmos – interactive installation and research with the support of KIKK Galaxy
On a Monster Road – speculative, posthuman surviving scenarios
Autotrophic Economy – ongoing research combining installation with docu-fiction video and objects
Maria Boto laboratoriumbio