Young Visual Artists Awards

RU Exhibition: Domesticated Join us for our first group exhibition of the 2026 season at the RU House on Governors Island (@governorsisland ), featuring works by RU resident artists: Erika Malzoni (@malzonierika ) and Dániel Szalai (@daniel_szalai ), curated by Data Chigholashvili (@datachme ), Curator of Residency Unlimited. 🎊Opening: Saturday, May 16, 2026 | 11am-5pm 📅 On view: May 16, 17, 23, 24, 30 | 11am-5pm 📍Location: RU House at Colonels Row, Building #404B on Governors Island To Domesticate: “to bring animals or plants under human control in order to provide food, power, or company” – reads a definition in the Cambridge Dictionary. Perhaps one of the most extreme examples of domestication is the silkworm (Bombyx mori). While this is not the oldest species subjected to human control, over 5,000 years of domestication resulted in these insects having lost the ability to fly, camouflage, and find food – entirely depending on humans for survival. This exhibition does not include direct references to silkworms, but the conceptual background is strongly informed by sericulture and its metaphors, which will most likely emerge in curatorial walkthroughs by Data Chigholashvili taking place on May 16, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM. By bringing together Malzoni and Szalai’s distinctive themes and approaches, the exhibition explores interconnections between domestication and classification, questioning anthropocentrism and how far it can stretch. Together, these works invite visitors to explore our relational patterns towards animate and inanimate worlds, hence, think about human need – and the limits thereof – to classify, control, accumulate, and utilize. Also, in the spirit of the famous “chicken and egg” problem, the exhibition ponders the question of what came first: classification or domestication? #ResidencyUnlimited #ArtExhibition #Opening #governorsisland

Introducing the Artists in Residence joining us this May! Milena Ivić (@mileenaivic ) is a RU/YVAA artist (@___yvaa___ ) and recipient of the 2025 ZVONO Art Award (@krakcentar ) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Milena Ivić is an artist, designer and activist based in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She works across various media, such as public intervention, installation, objects, performance, and video. Her practice examines the paradox of freedom in a post-war divided country, within political, economic, religious, ethno-national, and cultural contexts. Experiences of institutional censorship in her city of residence have influenced her practice to occupy public space. Employing conceptual, performative, and feminist strategies through a provocative and socially engaged approach, she continuously explores whether art can disrupt dominant paradigms and intervene in reality, going beyond institutional confines. Milena’s graduate work was awarded a solo exhibition by MSURS, Banja Luka, B&H (2019). Her critical engagement with MSURS’s Gallery Plus during the solo exhibition project “What Do We Do with All This Freedom?” (2020) earned her the status of a dissident artist. Her recent group exhibitions include “Invisible Tissue”, ZVONO Award (YVAA) finalist exhibition, KRAK Center for Contemporary Culture Bihać, B&H (2025); “April Meetings”, the blocked Student Cultural Center, Belgrade, Serbia (2025) and the feminist exhibition “Blue, Purple, Green, Yellow”, Crvena, Sarajevo, B&H (2024). Milena Ivić’s residency is made possible with support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding. #ResidencyUnlimited #ArtistsInResidence #RUresidency #ArtResidency

RU Talk: Between Sculpture and the City—A Conversation between Vladimir Novak and Nick Tobier 📅 Tuesday, March 31 🕐 1 PM (EST) / 7 PM (CET) / 6 PM (WET) Virtual Talk: This program will be streamed online via Zoom at the link in bio! 🔗 This virtual talk will also be live-streamed at RU’s space at 360 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY for visitors who wish to attend in person. Please join us for a conversation between RU resident artist Vladimir Novak (@vnovak.in ) and Nick Tobier (@nicktobier ), artist and Professor at Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. Together, they will discuss Vladimir Novak’s work that mines our relationships between city space and sculptural space, both site-specifically and generally. The discussion will focus on a number of his projects, such as transforming the tall skinny volume of a former light bulb testing facility in Croatia’s capital into a sonic and auditory beacon, which plays back the tempos of daily life; or Novak’s installations and objects that challenge our assumptions of weight, mass, and the roles of spectators. Through material with specific associations of weight and mass – from monumental steel and straw constructions to working with light and space – Vladimir Novak’s practice engages contemporary dialogues on the roles of performances without performers, coincidental audiences, and performances by audiences. 🔗 Learn more from the link in bio! Image 1: Day for a Day by Vladimir Novak, photo by Goran Škofić Image 2: Photo by Žaklina Antonijević #ResidencyUnlimited #RUTalk #VladimirNovak #NickTobier #RUArtists

Introducing the YVAA artists who will be doing their residencies at Residency Unlimited (@residencyunlimited ) in 2026: Milena Ivić (@mileenaivic ) is the recipient of the 2025 Zvono Award (@krakcentar ) a highly selective prize that rewards a young artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina with a residency in New York. Milena’s two month residency at RU will start in May - June 2026. Milena Ivić is an artist, designer and activist based in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She works across various media, such as public intervention, installation, objects, performance, and video. Her practice examines the paradox of freedom in a post-war divided country, within political, economic, religious, ethno-national, and cultural contexts. Experiences of institutional censorship in her city of residence have influenced her practice to occupy public space. Employing conceptual, performative, and feminist strategies through provocative and socially engaged approach, she continuously explores whether art can disrupt dominant paradigms, and intervene in reality, going beyond institutional confines. Milena’s graduate work was awarded a solo exhibition by MSURS, Banja Luka, B&H (2019). Her critical engagement with MSURS’s Gallery Plus during the solo exhibition project What Do We Do with All This Freedom? (2020) earned her the status of a dissident artist. Recent group exhibitions include Invisible Tissue, ZVONO Award (YVAA) finalist exhibition, KRAK Center for Contemporary Culture Bihać, B&H (2025); April Meetings, at the blocked Student Cultural Center, Belgrade, Serbia (2025) and the feminist exhibition Blue, Purple, Green, Yellow, at Crvena, Sarajevo, B&H (2024).  Photo by Nikola Morača #ResidencyUnlimited #YVAA #ContemporaryArt #NewYorkCity #ArtistInResidence

Introducing the YVAA artists who will be doing their residencies at Residency Unlimited (@residencyunlimited ) in 2026: Nika Erjavec (@nika.erjavec ) is the recipient of the 2025 OHO Award (@p74gallery ) a highly selective prize that provides a contemporary artist from Slovenia with a residency in New York. Nika’s residency at RU takes place from August -September 2026. Nika Erjavec is an interdisciplinary artist focused on the ways sensory languages and systems shape and challenge modes of sensing. Grounded in research and hands-on experimentation she is currently exploring urban wilderness and working with the physicality of vibration and light, creating interactive installations that probe perception and our idea of reality. Her most recent solo exhibition “(un)objectivity” (2024) was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana. Nika Erjavec has two permanent installations; the interactive light ambient “Cellular Landscapes” (2024) in front of the University Medical Centre Ljubljana and the interactive sound installation with Doroteja Erhatič V/Posluh (2022) at the Slovenian Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana.  During her master studies she received the highest award of the Academy for her series of installations and hybrid artistic research (2019). Since 2014 she has been actively exhibiting in the local and international context. #ResidencyUnlimited #YVAA #ContemporaryArt #NewYorkCity #ArtistInResidence

Introducing the YVAA artists who will be doing their residencies at Residency Unlimited (@residencyunlimited ) in 2026: Krsto Gligorjadis (@krstogligorjadis ) is the recipient of the 2025 Denes Award (@denes.award.nagrada ) a highly selective prize that provides a young visual artist from North Macedonia with a residency in New York. Krsto’s residency at RU takes place from June - August 2026. Krsto Gligorjadis is a multidisciplinary visual artist and performer whose work fuses ritual, myth, and contemporary questions of masculinity, shaped by the chauvinistic context in which he lives and works. Trained in law, pedagogy, graphic design, and visual arts, his interdisciplinary practice bridges gender rights, societal critique, and personal transformation. Through performance, installation, and participatory works, Gligorjadis explores how private emotions become public reflection, questioning what it means to be a man today. His body-centered practice functions as a therapeutic ritual, transforming trauma into embodied artwork and creating spaces of empathy, accountability, and healing. My Father’s Skirt received the QUEER MAKEDONIUM Award, while Dismembered Body closed Biennale Belgrade 2025. In 2025, he opened the second part of the Skopje Youth Biennale, received the DENES Award, and was nominated as a Peace Champion by RYCO for using art in peacebuilding. #ResidencyUnlimited #YVAA #ContemporaryArt #NewYorkCity #ArtistInResidence

Introducing the YVAA artists who will be doing their residencies at Residency Unlimited (@residencyunlimited ) in 2026: Slava George (@theserpentcircle ) is the recipient of the 2025 Baza Award (@baza_award ), for contemporary artists in Bulgaria that provides a residency in New York. Slava’s residency at RU takes place from February - March 2026. Slava George is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sofia, Bulgaria. She works with various media – installation art, sculpture, performance, video, photography and conceptual fashion design. Her artistic position is deeply connected to the role of women and the feminine as a social construct. She deconstructs elements of reality to the point where the processes of social belief formation become the object of critical analysis. Many of her projects are related to topics like human rights, war conflicts and current political issues. Her solo exhibitions include: “Let your hair down” at +359 Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria (2024) and “Woman, Life, Freedom” at One+ Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria (2022). Slava George has participated in group shows such as “Odyssea: Le chant des sirènes” – a collaboration between Spiaggia Libera (Marseille) and PUNTA Gallery (Sofia), part of the contemporary art festival BUNA 2025. #ResidencyUnlimited #YVAA #ContemporaryArt #NewYorkCity #ArtistInResidence

Introducing the YVAA artists who will be doing their residencies at Residency Unlimited (@residencyunlimited ) in 2026: Milo Masoničić (@milo_make_stuff ) is the recipient of the 2025 Milčik Award (@institute_of_contemporary_art ) a highly selective prize that provides a young visual artist from Montenegro with a residency in New York. Milo’s residency at RU takes place from September - October 2026. Sampling sits at the core of Milo Masoničić’s practice, functioning both as a tool and as a way of perceiving the world. His work spans experimental film, video, sound, and digital media, drawing on processes of montage, appropriation, archiving, and remixing. By working with fragments displaced from their original narratives, Masoničić constructs new visual and digital landscapes from materials that are already familiar or recognizable. Although the materials and methods vary, Masoničić’s practice consistently returns to themes of childhood, time and aging, nature, and technology, exploring the fragile relationships between memory, repetition, and transformation. Milo has won several awards, among those: the Miličik Award in 2025 with “Tenderness (loop)”; in 2024 he won the Award for Best Video Work with “KidsForever” at the INTERBIFEP International Biennial of Portrait in Tuzla. In 2025 he was awarded of Best Art Work at Gallery Neon in Belgrade for “What Endures Began as Imagination”. #ResidencyUnlimited #YVAA #ContemporaryArt #NewYorkCity #ArtistInResidence

Introducing the Artists in Residence joining us this February! Vladimir Novak (@vnovak.in ) is a RU/YVAA artist (@___yvaa___ ) and the recipient of the 2025 Radoslav Putar Award (@isuicazg ), a highly selective prize that provides a contemporary artist from Croatia with a residency in New York. Vladimir Novak is a Zagreb-based artist whose practice investigates the limits of sculpture as a medium through the use of objects, (day)light, and sound installations, with a particular focus on space, media, and affective intensities. Through iterative processes, he seeks to dismantle established media boundaries by exploring the visible and the invisible, engaging with concepts such as body–mass, object–installation, stasis–movement, and light–shadow. His recent projects In Visible, Calm, and Day for a Day, employ radically minimalist and subtle interventions that emphasize processuality and the entanglement of artworks with natural and urban rhythms, their transformation across media, and their physical and socio-ecological resonances. Operating at the threshold of perception, within the ambivalence between malfunction and artistic act, his work challenges the perceptions of time and attention, questioning the boundary between aesthetic experience and banal everyday events. Vladimir Novak’s residency is made possible with support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding. #ResidencyUnlimited #ArtistsInResidence #RUresidency #ArtResidency

Introducing the YVAA artists who will be doing their residencies at Residency Unlimited (@residencyunlimited ) in 2026: Nemanja Milenković (@nemanja____milenkovic ) is the recipient of the 2025 Dimitrije Basicevic Mangelos Award (@mangelosnagrada ) a highly selective prize that provides a contemporary artist from Serbia with a residency in New York. Nemanja’s residency at RU takes place from October-November 2026. Nemanja Milenković explores the relationships between humans and non-human animals, which he understands as existing along a spectrum between two extremes: the radical exploitation of non-human animals and their radical protection. He creates layered installations that incorporate drawing, painting, readymade objects, and performance, seeking to understand processes of coexistence with nature through discipline and collaboration in artistic practice. Alongside his individual practice, he is a member of the renowned art group Led Art, founded by Nikola Džafo in 1993. His recent projects include solo exhibitions (Un)Natural Speculations, co-authored with Darija Dragojlović (2025, Subotica Contemporary Art Gallery), and Blagos (loviti) (2023, Remont Gallery, Belgrade), as well as the retrospective exhibition of the Led Art group titled ReCAPITULACION: Disobedient Objects/Subjects 1992–2022 (Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina), which he co-curated alongside other core team members. #ResidencyUnlimited #YVAA #ContemporaryArt #NewYorkCity #ArtistInResidence

Introducing the YVAA artists who will be doing their residencies at Residency Unlimited (@residencyunlimited ) in 2026: Olsi Hoxha (@olsi_____ ) is the recipient of the 2025 Ardhje Award (@zeta_contemporary_art_center ) a highly selective prize that provides a young artist from Albania with a residency in New York. Olsi’s residency at RU takes place from October - November 2026. Olsi Hoxha is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans materials, disciplines, and technologies, including electroacoustic sound sculptures, video art, collage, photography, installation, and circuit bending. He moves between the technical and the poetic, working with found objects, obsolete technologies, and discarded media to reflect on how technological, social, and personal systems shape perception, behaviour, and meaning. Using thrown-away materials such as old electronics, broken devices, and forgotten images, he creates interactive works that function as a form of urban archaeology. In 2025 he had a solo exhibition “Minus Art Space”, Olsi has participated in several group shows such as Bazament Art Space, Tirana – 2019, Bulevard Art Space, Tirana – 202, Oda Gallery, Shkodër – 2022. #ResidencyUnlimited #YVAA #ContemporaryArt #NewYorkCity #ArtistInResidence

Introducing the Artists in Residence joining us this February! Slava George (@theserpentcircle ) is a RU/YVAA artist (@__yvaa__ ) and recipient of the 2025 Baza Award (@baza_award , @ica.sofia , @foundation_edmond_demirdjian ) for young visual artists in Bulgaria. Slava George is a multidisciplinary artist who works with various media – installation art, sculpture, performance, video, photography and conceptual fashion design. Her artistic position is deeply connected to the role of women and the feminine as a social construct. She deconstructs elements of reality to the point where the processes of social belief formation become the object of critical analysis. In her artistic research, she seeks the connections between social phenomena such as alchemy, myths and rituals, and specifically, how they are intertwined within the collective subconscious and the human condition. The link between millennia-long traditions and contemporary times is at the core of Slava’s work, analysed through psychology, anthropology, ethnography and more. Many of her projects are related to topics like human rights, war conflicts and current political issues. #ResidencyUnlimited #ArtistsInResidence #RUresidency #ArtResidency #MultidisciplinaryArtist