VV Foundation is pleased to announce its upcoming international collaborations for 2026.
Guided by its mission to advance Latvian contemporary art on the international stage, the Foundation has initiated joint projects with the Ducato Prize (Italy) and the Ria Keburia Foundation (Georgia). These partnerships aim to foster artistic mobility and creative exchange across the Baltic region and beyond, while further strengthening VV Foundation’s role in promoting Baltic contemporary art within the global cultural landscape.
Continuing its collaboration with the Ria Keburia Foundation, VV Foundation is pleased to announce that Latvian artist Andris Eglītis will participate in the Ria Keburia residency programme in October 2026. This fully funded residency offers artists dedicated time and space to develop new bodies of work within the unique and supportive environment of the Gurjaani region in Georgia.
In turn, VV Foundation’s PAiR residency in Pāvilosta, Latvia, will welcome Ani Toidze, a young Georgian artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, and video, unfolding surreal and imaginative visions through real-life forms and blending intuitive, dreamlike imagery with material observation.
Founded in 2018 by Georgian art patron Ria Keburia, the Ria Keburia Foundation supports the development of contemporary art in Georgia and the South Caucasus region. By engaging with global artistic processes, the Foundation fosters intercultural dialogue and brings together a diverse community of arts professionals.
In addition, VV Foundation has partnered with the Ducato Residency Prize, which this year has been awarded to the collaborative duo Ileana Arnaoutou and Ismene King. The artists will join PAiR this summer, where they will further develop their practices within the distinctive context of the Baltic coastline.
About the artists
Andris Eglītis (b.1981, Riga, Latvia) is Latvian contemporary artists living and working in Riga and Drusti Parish. Eglītis is one of the leading artists of his generation, working in variety of paintings, sculptures and architectonic installations made combining oil paint and the wood, soil, sand and clay. His works are permeated by an interest in the relationship between the material and the immaterial, as well as the interaction between aesthetic form and practical (un)usability. Eglītis has been taking part in various group exhibitions and held more than dozen solo shows in Latvia and abroad since 2000 and was awarded the Purvītis Prize in 2013 for his solo show EARTH WORKS in Mūkusala Art Salon (Riga). In 2015, together with the artist Katrīna Neiburga he represented Latvia at the 56th Venice Art Biennale.
Ani Toidze (b. 1995) lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia. She graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, in 2017. Her artistic practice explores painting, drawing, and video, unfolding imaginary paths of surreal vision through real-life forms and blending intuitive, dreamlike imagery with material observation. Toidze has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Georgia and internationally, including Drawing Room Art Fair (2022), Open Studios at the Kachreti Exhibition Space (2021), BoCs Art – Residenze Artistiche in Cosenza, Italy (2019), and Vanishing at Factory, Tbilisi (2018). In 2021, she presented her solo exhibition I Float in the Pink Mist at Gamrekeli Gallery in Tbilisi, where she exhibited large-scale paintings that articulated her ongoing exploration of imagined worlds and surreal perception grounded in lived reality.
Ileana Arnaoutou and Ismene King collaborative duo was formed in 2019 and is currently based in Athens. Their sculptures navigate between familiarity and estrangement, blending organic and industrial elements, floral and mechanical forms, and reflecting a posthuman sensibility where life persists in unexpected ways. Ileana Arnaoutou (b. 1994) is a painter and sculptor, and a graduate of the BA Fine Art programme at the Slade School of Fine Art and the MA History of Art at UCL, London. Ismene King (b. 1993) is a sculptor and ceramicist, and a graduate of the MFA Sculpture programme at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. They have held solo presentations such as Lo que una vez fue, lo que perdura at Artnueve (Project Space Ap1), Murcia (2025); I will hold you forever. Or till everyone leaves the room at Alkinois, Athens (2024); and All the sticks, spears and swords, blades entwined part of the One Work Show Series at Callirrhoë, Athens (2024). The duo are the Ducato Residency Prize 2025 winners.
