Festival Highlights

Empowering Artists: The EAVA Residency Program

Vincent Aug 27, 2025 2 min read min read
Empowering Artists: The EAVA Residency Program

The EAVA Artists Residency It is a four-month program of mentorship, materials, and studio support designed to equip emerging creatives to become voices for justice.

Through an open call, six visual artists were selected this year. Each has been guided to produce three original works exploring climate justice, anti-discrimination, democracy, and freedom of expression. Their journey is not only about craft, but about responsibility: creating art that confronts oppression, challenges dominant truths, and imagines new futures.

At the heart of the residency lies a conviction that in times of crisis, artists shape new languages of radical imagination. Their work defends lives, freedoms, and dignity.”

This year’s residency exhibition brings together six artists whose practices reflect three core values:

Radical Imagination – the courage to envision the world not as it is, but as it could be. Their art questions the unquestioned and makes room for multiple perspectives, voices, and stories.

Social Practice – art rooted in society, created with communities, institutions, and individuals. These works are not made in isolation; they emerge from dialogue, participation, and collective change.

Inclusion – a direct counter to exclusion and marginalization. The residency provides conditions for artists whose voices are often silenced to take center stage, shaping how society sees itself and its possibilities.

The result is a body of work that is both a mirror and a call:

A mirror reflecting who we are and what we defend.

A call to act, to feel, and to imagine differently.

Here, art is not silent. It is a defense of community, a demand for dignity, and a vision of what is possible.

With the EAVA Residency, we are building a strong foundation for the festival while directly supporting the next generation of creatives who embody our motto:
“we are the change that we seek”