Portrait: Vika Eksta

Linda Boļšakova is a visual artist practising in the fields of installation, performance, photography and writing. The artist is interested in questioning people’s relationship with nature as a result of in-depth research, as well as creating parallels between the human body and the bodies of plants. The artist’s practice is based on collaboration with philosophers, researchers, biologists, composers to create research-based, interdisciplinary projects.

Supported by the foundation, Linda will be able to develop her work in the group exhibition “Tempo Incognito: On Flows, Rhythm, and Movement” in Turkey as well as take part in the first PAiR Residency call-up in May-June this year, where Linda Boļšakova will work with a creative group on an interdisciplinary project attempting to answer the question of how it would be possible to introduce into artistic practice and the PAiR Residency model, the transition from individualism and human superiority to an inclusive and conscious model where the human is part of the entire ecosystem. How can we transform from a consuming and cultivating model to caregivers serving the needs of nature? Along with the creative group, Linda Boļšakova will explore the diversity of flora and fauna in the city of Pāvilosta and the surrounding area, to identify its community and history, and to think of an end result of artistic research that respects all these values.

VV Foundation already supported Linda Boļšakova back in 2019, when the artist participated in the ISSP Summer School. The interdisciplinary and anthropological artistic approach of the young artist, in which she examines the multi-layered character of interaction between humans and nature, is an important theme for the foundation which brings together art and interdisciplinarity, the Baltic Sea and its coastal nature, artists, musicians, poets, philosophers, curators and critics in its international PAiR Residency programme in Pāvilosta. Linda was also among the residents of PAiR 2019.

Semina futuri/placeholder for future coexistence, Sculpture Quadrennial Riga, 2020 (Photo: Lauris Aizupietis)

Off spring, Gallery Alma, Riga, 2020 (Photo: Toms Harjo)

Intimacy of Strangers, ISSP Gallery, Riga, 2020 (Photo: Andrejs Strokins)

Other artists