Andreana Stoyanova

Artist Statement

Award-winning photographer Andreana Stoyanova, born in Bulgaria in 1982, was at the age of three immersed in ballet and on her way to becoming a ballet prodigy. Traumatized by a childhood sexual molestation, she suffered from self-inflicted body shaming and guilt. This experience greatly impacted her life as a teenager and early twenties as a woman. Later as a UC Berkeley student, her innate ever-present passion about art and self-expression found a wider and intense expression in drawing, and most particularly in one after another sculpting of, the female body - with the huge benefit of bringing relief and healing from a sense of guilt and shame about her own body she carried as a young woman.

In college Andreana also resumed dancing, and passionately so, as a vehicle to celebrate and explore her own body, passion, sensuality and sexuality as a woman, just as she explored that of all women with her sculpting. In the processes she gained deep appreciation for the wonder and the beauty that is the human body – now the inspiration and focus of her work in her photography career.