Kerolaina Linkeviča is announced as recipient of this year’s Baltic x Shape Arts Emergent residency
11 Oct 2024
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and Shape Arts, London are pleased to announce Kerolaina Linkeviča as the recipient of this year’s Emergent residency and bursary.
Now in its third year, Emergent is a hybrid residency and support programme for early-career disabled artists with a £5k bursary. The open call welcomed applications from disabled artists and creative practitioners in the first five years of their career, who have met with significant barriers in developing their artistic practice. The three-month residency programme combines digital and physical elements of delivery, supported by both organisations.
This year’s shortlisting process was very competitive with a high volume of applications. The residency and bursary have been awarded to Kerolaina Linkeviča. Linkeviča’s multidisclinary practice is deeply rooted in nature, animism, magic, and the multiverse of computer games. Their work explores imaginary worlds, symbiotic entities, alternative subcultures, and virtual environments. As part of their residency, they hope to connect with the DIY music scene in the North East.
Linkeviča will take part in the residency online and at Baltic, where, in addition to receiving expert support and mentoring to inform their practice, they will use the facilities and have curatorial and technical input to extend her current research and develop new work. A showcasing or broadcast opportunity will also be provided as part of the programme.
Baltic and Shape Arts have also offered a package of support to a small number of shortlisted artists: Oscar Boyle, Maya Rose Edwards, Liberty Hodes, Romi Sarfaty.
About Kerolaina Linkeviča
Linkeviča was born in Daugavpils, Latvia and migrated to the UK at ten years old. Their childhood was deeply rooted in the forest, animism, magic, and the multiverse of computer games, all of which informs their practice today. Linkeviča's work expresses and explores imaginary worlds, symbiotic entities, alternative subcultures, and virtual environments; each personifying a range of theories, mythos, and emotional histories, continuously evolving through the ecology of their imagination. Linkeviča seeks to inspire others to explore their inner worlds through tangible making, immersive questing, and generative play, enabling the creative apparatus of personal transformation that may be discovered, actuating more creative agency in our metamorphic lives.
About Shape Arts
Shape Arts is a disability-led organisation breaking barrier to creative excellence. We deliver a range of projects supporting marginalised artists, as well as training cultural venues to be more inclusive and accessible for disabled people as employees, artists, and audiences. Running alongside this portfolio is the NLHF funded National Disability Movement Archive and Collection (NDMAC), a radical collecting and retelling of the Disability Rights Movement’s heritage story; and, until recently led by Shape, Unlimited, which, largely supported by Arts Council and British Council funding, provides a platform for disabled artists to develop, produce and show ambitious and high-quality work, and which aims to transform perceptions of how the work of disabled artists is received in the mainstream art world.
The Emergent programme is a collaboration between Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead and Shape Arts, London, with key activity taking place online and in the North East of England, where Baltic is based.
Each year, the award is given to an emerging disabled artist with a socially-engaged practice and a small cohort of shortlisted artists are offered tailored support.
Emergent is supported by The Fenton Arts Trust.
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