












Artist Residency Vishovgrad.International is an artist residency based on an open call for international visual artists. The residency is located in Vishovgrad, a rural village in the central part of northern Bulgaria. It is a place for artists to find inspiration, focus on their work, produce solo exhibitions, and initiate extensive curatorial projects.
ARV.I have its own independent gallery space in Veliko Turnovo, the old capital of Bulgaria. Gallery Heerz Tooya started in January 2019. www.heerztooya.com
ARV.I hosts contemporary visual artists from around the world. Every artist-in-residence conclude their stay with a solo exhibition containing work done throughout their stay in Vishovgrad and the rest of the Veliko Turnovo region. Please have a look at previous activities in our archives / 2018 / 2019 / 2020 has been a difficult year, but we are positive and ready to host three artists in six months in 2021. Stay tuned.
Since 2008 a small farm has been renovated and become an independent artist-run venue dedicated to local and international visual artists, curators, writers, performers, and researchers. Since 2017 ARV.I continue to provide creatives a place to live and a studio for individual artistic practice and research. ARV.I function as a hub initiating exhibitions and other collaborative projects with other artists, art associations, and cultural institutions in different parts of the Veliko Tarnovo region. As such ARV. I benefit both the artist-in-residence and the general public by evolving artistic awareness and insights from the contemporary art world and the everyday life of Bulgaria.
After liberation from Ottoman rule, Vishovgrad had a population of around 3500; now, less than 300 people are living in the village. Bulgaria is one of the countries in the world, in the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall and communist rule in 1989, with the most significant decline in population, effectively creating phenomena such as 'ghost villages.' As much as ARV.I is apolitical; there are nevertheless potent issues to be reflected upon in terms of its public situation. The current state of Vishovgrad and other Bulgarian villages depicts the backyard of Europe, potent with a not yet explored embodiment of what we are confronted by in the known stages of arts today — creating intermediary platforms in this environment in between art and the public, ARV.I seek to evoke new thoughts and ideas, artistic creations, projects, and topics of research, even political subjects. With few artist-run galleries and alternative spaces, most young artists seek out other countries, and rightly so, but I aim to grasp the potential of reversing that tendency.
- ARV.I Director / Lars Nordby
/ /
ARV.I have its own independent gallery space in Veliko Turnovo, the old capital of Bulgaria. Gallery Heerz Tooya started in January 2019. www.heerztooya.com
ARV.I hosts contemporary visual artists from around the world. Every artist-in-residence conclude their stay with a solo exhibition containing work done throughout their stay in Vishovgrad and the rest of the Veliko Turnovo region. Please have a look at previous activities in our archives / 2018 / 2019 / 2020 has been a difficult year, but we are positive and ready to host three artists in six months in 2021. Stay tuned.
Since 2008 a small farm has been renovated and become an independent artist-run venue dedicated to local and international visual artists, curators, writers, performers, and researchers. Since 2017 ARV.I continue to provide creatives a place to live and a studio for individual artistic practice and research. ARV.I function as a hub initiating exhibitions and other collaborative projects with other artists, art associations, and cultural institutions in different parts of the Veliko Tarnovo region. As such ARV. I benefit both the artist-in-residence and the general public by evolving artistic awareness and insights from the contemporary art world and the everyday life of Bulgaria.
After liberation from Ottoman rule, Vishovgrad had a population of around 3500; now, less than 300 people are living in the village. Bulgaria is one of the countries in the world, in the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall and communist rule in 1989, with the most significant decline in population, effectively creating phenomena such as 'ghost villages.' As much as ARV.I is apolitical; there are nevertheless potent issues to be reflected upon in terms of its public situation. The current state of Vishovgrad and other Bulgarian villages depicts the backyard of Europe, potent with a not yet explored embodiment of what we are confronted by in the known stages of arts today — creating intermediary platforms in this environment in between art and the public, ARV.I seek to evoke new thoughts and ideas, artistic creations, projects, and topics of research, even political subjects. With few artist-run galleries and alternative spaces, most young artists seek out other countries, and rightly so, but I aim to grasp the potential of reversing that tendency.
- ARV.I Director / Lars Nordby