Independent Curator & Founder of Stūdija

Maija Rudovska is an independent curator, art critic, cultural agent, art historian and educator. She holds an MA in art history from the Art Academy of Latvia, Riga (2009) and has completed postgraduate studies in curating from Curatorlab in the Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm (2010). Currently she is a PhD student in the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn. This summer she will be opening an art space Studija (in Kuldīga), which will provide a residency/studio space for creatives to work with new and old ideas, developing them in close connection with the local community.

Rudovska has gained expertise and visibility in both regional (Baltic/Nordic) and international realms of contemporary art, and has worked with institutions and art spaces such as: MO museum (LT), the Manifesta biennial (for the 13th edition in Marseille), the Foundation Ricard (both FR), Komplot, the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts (both BE), Futura (CZ), the Moderna Museet (SE), the Kim? Contemporary Art Centre (LV), Rupert, the Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius (both LT), the KUMU Art Museum (EE), the Living Art Museum (IS), HIAP (FI) and others.

Art Therapist & Founder of Art Therapy Lab

Based in New York City, active worldwide, Julia Volonts is a Licensed Art Therapist and Founder of Art Therapy Lab, focused on creating art therapy experience that promote community engagement, make art therapy more accessible, and inspire new conversations around mental health.

As a dual citizen of Latvia and a Fulbright Program alumna, Julia moved to Riga in 2019 to conduct art therapy research, returning to NYC in 2022. Her international work fostered collaborations with international organizations, allowing her to launch community-based projects that serve diverse populations. Julia has partnered with a range of collaborators, including Paris Collage Collective, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, MARTA Centre, LGBT House Riga, School of Visual Arts NYC, ISSP Latvia, and Kyiv Collage Collective.

In addition to her community-based work, Julia has a clinical background in private practice, where she offers individual and group psychotherapy virtually to adults addressing anxiety, depression, and relationship challenges. Julia is actively involved in the European Federation of Art Therapy, contributing to their Professional Development Committee and Art Therapy in Museums group, emphasizing innovative art therapy approaches. She is passionate about the evolving role of art therapy in mental health care and is excited about the opportunities this residency will offer to advance arts in health programming.

Performance Artist

Linda Boļšakova is based in Latvia and her interdisciplinary works focus mainly on installation and performance. Through these mediums, she explores the interconnectedness and fragility of the borders between humans, surrounding environments and plant life.

Her practice is ecological in that it deals with the relations between beings and their physical surroundings. She has collaborated with composers, botanists, 3D artists, breakdancers, various orchid species, biotope experts, beatboxers and web developers.

Boļšakova’s works are located at The National Botanic Garden of Latvia and Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanic Garden in Istanbul. Solo shows include “Intimacy of strangers” at ISSP Gallery and “Off spring” at Alma Gallery. She has participated in group shows at the Latvian National Museum of Art, a public performance program at Kunsthalle Bratislava and Sculpture Quadrennial Riga.

She has taken part in residencies including the Nida Art Colony, Lithuania, the Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Zengården, the head temple of the Swedish Zen Buddhist Society, as well as the VV Foundation’s residency, Latvia, and Hybrida Sweden.

Arts in Health Researcher

After growing up in very rural eastern Germany, a voluntary service in museum pedagogy sparked the idea to study cultural empowerment strategies within a Bachelors of ‘Intercultural Communication and American (Feminist) Studies’ at MLU Halle.

Reichenbach pursues her own mixed-media visual art practice and incorporates her experience now in academia through artistic research. As she is a scholarship holder of Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, she frequently creates in interdisciplinary teams and co-founded the Mental Health Network within democracy educational contexts. During the pandemic, she further educated herself on art as therapy and gained more experience in creative mentorship within groups and for individuals. Her art practice is very much informed by having been a young carer, exploring intuitive artmaking, and seeking to de-stigmatize alternative concepts of time in shaping life and career paths as a response to chronic health challenges.

In her Masters ‘Culture and Societal Transformation’ at TU Dresden, which she is soon to finish, she writes on creative micro-practices and their potential for cultural resistance, agency in complex transformation processes, as well as an awareness of healthy communal and environmental entanglements. Recently, she has been part of conceptualizing and presenting performance art on ecofeminist questions within educational contexts.