Marita Liivak Receives WIELS Residency Grant in Brussels
The Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center (ECADC) is pleased to announce the results of the 2025 open call for the WIELS Residency Program in Brussels. The WIELS expert jury in collaboration with the Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center, has awarded the residency to Marita Liivak.
Liivak’s practice, which combines technical mastery with intuitive exploration, delves into themes of identity, femininity, and mental health, while also investigating the intersections between personal and public spaces. WIELS’ critically engaging and experimental environment provides an ideal setting for Liivak to further develop her work.
The WIELS jury, composed of residency programme mentors Sylvie Eyberg and Simon Thompson as well as WIELS Director Dirk Snauwaert, decided to select Marita Liivak as the 2025 resident. The jury believes that Marita, who is searching for a new configuration of genre, technique, and representational schemes within ongoing discussions on painterly figuration and identity debates, will further formulate her own artistic voice with the benefit of the dense painterly production found in Belgium, and the engagement with the prospective group of nine residents, who will stimulate each other through mutual critique and assessment of their works, processes, and personal interests.
Marita Liivak (b. 1994) is an Estonian painter whose work is deeply influenced by personal experiences and emotional landscapes. Over the years, her practice has evolved to investigate the boundaries between private and public spaces. She focuses on urbanism and the ways cities influence our collective experiences, analyzing the tensions between individuals and their environments.
The WIELS international residency programme is designed for contemporary artists from around the world, offering a professional working environment and the opportunity to engage in artistic and theoretical dialogues related to contemporary art. During the six-month residency, participants are provided with a personal studio space and receive weekly feedback and discussions, along with opportunities to visit exhibitions and art events in Belgium and neighbouring countries. In addition, presentation moments are organized where artists can showcase their work and engage with fellow residents’ projects. The goal of the WIELS residency is to help artists develop their creative practice and professional activities in a propitious environment that feeds from, and contributes to, Brussels’ rich, multicultural, plurilingual and diasporic art scene.
ECADC is WIELS’ Estonian partner since 2024, following a transition initiated by the Ministry of Culture to reorganize tasks between cultural institutions. From 2017 to 2023, the Estonian partner for WIELS was the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA), during which time prominent Estonian artists Paul Kuimet, Jaanus Samma, Anna Škodenko, Tõnis Saadoja, Tanja Muravskaja, Anu Vahtra, Eva Mustonen, Ingel Vaikla, Laivi Suurväli and Hedi Jaansoo participated in the programme. In 2024, Ruudu Ulas was selected.
The WIELS residency will take place from 8th January to 30th June 2025. The residency is supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture.