In July, we are thrilled to welcome Ingvild Melberg Eikeland, Annija Muižule, Kamilla Kūna, and Ilga Leimanis to the residency.

Ingvild Melberg Eikeland works across material-based and digital media, combining them into installations through storytelling. Her artistic practice builds on investigations into the valence of myth and mythos and the role of narrative in forming cultural imaginaries and sustaining hegemonic structures. Eikeland’s work is developed through imagining alternate realities and in shifting the perspectives of the self-soothing stories humans make up to comfort themselves during environmental and political crises. Through critical fabulation and the appropriation of knowledge systems and tools, such as language and data, these stories are reimagined and voiced by nonhuman and material actants.

Annija Muižule is an artistic researcher and educator interested in the shifting materialities of language and the unstable boundaries between objects, bodies, and environments. Her work unfolds through writing, installation and photography, exploring new ways of sensing and relating. At the core of her research is a focus on collectivity and eco-systemic thinking that challenge fixed notions of the individual self.

Kamilla Kūna is an environmental aesthetic researcher with a background in cultural sociology. She identifies as a mediator within the artistic field, moving between curator, producer, creator and participant. She works on topics that touch upon memory, eco-aesthetics and landscape dramaturgy, focusing on co-creating with interdisciplinary visual and performance artists.

Ilga Leimanis(SFHEA) is a London-based, Canadian-born, artist, educator and author, of Latvian origin. Associate Lecturer at University of the Arts London, her practice-led pedagogy, research and thought leadership have brought her into contact with diverse groups of students. Facilitating experiences of emergence, Ilga specialises in fast, hand-drawn sketches and diagrams used for idea generation, understanding and communication, and is currently writing about the 'bloom space' of potential. Her research interests include creative methodologies, compassionate pedagogy and Baltic folklore. Ilga’s art practice is often collaborative and features drawing, collage, installation, and walking. Her first book Sketching Perspective was published in 2021.

The residency is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia (Valsts kultūrkapitāla fonds).