Carnival weekend at the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Center!

During the carnival weekend (May 15–16), alongside tailless cats and satirical costumes, the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Center will present a multilayered program featuring two exhibitions, a performance, and a party with optimistic electronic music inspired by chess.

The program brings together artists and designers from six European cities—Chemnitz, Mulhouse, Manchester, Tampere, Łódź, and Gabrovo—as part of the project Metamorphoses of Workwear, realized with the support of the Creative Europe programme. Over the course of two years, through residencies in these cities, meetings with local communities, and research into both active and abandoned factories, artists created 18 contemporary workwear designs inspired by local industrial histories. The culmination—and grand finale—of the project will take place in the building of the former Textile Technical School in Gabrovo, now home to the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Center.

On May 15 at 18:00, the performance Metamorphoses of Workwear will take place, in which participants without professional performance experience will wear the created designs and recount, from their own perspectives, the stories behind them. The “actor-models” will welcome visitors into classrooms frozen in 2009, production spaces, and dyeing and mechanical engineering studios, while audiences will be invited to discover the narratives scattered across the building’s different floors.

On May 16 at 15:00, before the carnival parade, the exhibition Metamorphoses of Workwear will open. The installation brings together all 18 designs, interweaving Gabrovo’s textile industry with Chemnitz’s industrial innovation, Manchester’s labor resistance, Łódź’s fashion history, Mulhouse’s ornamental craftsmanship, and Tampere’s ritual practices.

Later that evening, from 23:00, the gymnasium of the former Textile Technical School will transform into a stage for the Romanian electronic duo K not K, whose music is inspired by the game of chess and defined by an optimistic sound. Following performances at festivals and venues across nearly all of Europe, the duo arrives in Gabrovo with an energy that naturally extends the carnival night. Carnival costumes are highly encouraged.

Running in parallel, on May 15 at 15:00, the exhibition Childhood Years will also open, presented in Gabrovo for the first time following its showing at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris. The exhibition explores childhood as the first stage of imagination, combining rare photographs from Christo’s early years in Bulgaria with works by contemporary artists connected to the Center. It was created to mark the 90th anniversary of Christo’s birth and the 30th anniversary of The Pont Neuf Wrapped.

Metamorphoses of Workwear is realised in collaboration with the Municipality of Gabrovo and in partnership with the Interactive Museum of Industry, with financial support from the Creative Europe programme. International partners in the project include the Museum of Industry in Chemnitz and the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź. Childhood Years is organized by the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Center – Gabrovo and the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris, with the support of the Museum of Humor and Satire, the Municipality of Gabrovo, and the America for Bulgaria Foundation.