Announcement of the 2025 Villa Romana Artist Residency Winners

International Guest Artists 2025: Romy Rüegger and Monika Kováčová

A cooperation between the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) and Villa Romana, Florence.

Villa Romana and ERIAC are pleased to announce the recipients of their joint artist-in-residency programme for 2025: Romy Rüegger and Monika Kováčová.

This ongoing collaboration—initiated in 2020—represents a shared commitment to supporting contemporary artists of Roma heritage. By bringing together the expertise, vision, and cultural reach of both institutions, the residency offers a unique platform for artistic exchange, visibility, and development.

The programme continues to serve as an important space for showcasing emerging voices within Roma contemporary art. Each selected artist is awarded a grant and invited to spend one month in residence at Villa Romana in Florence, where they are given time and space to pursue their artistic practice in a supportive and inspiring environment.

For the 2025 edition, ERIAC and Villa Romana received 18 eligible applications. The jury convened online via Zoom on 27 March 2025 to review the submissions and make the final selection. The jury was composed of:

Elena Agudio (art historian and curator, director of Villa Romana)
Jake Bowers (filmmaker, journalist, member of ERIAC Barvalipe Academy)
Robert Gabris (artist, former Villa Romana resident)
Timea Junghaus (curator, art historian, executive director of ERIAC)
Maria Lind (curator, writer, educator, director of Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Giron/Kiruna)

The jury established a clear protocol for assessing eligibility and selecting the residency awardees, guided by the following criteria:

The artists are at a stage in their careers where the residency in Florence would provide meaningful impact and development.
Their submitted portfolios reflect a high level of artistic maturity and excellence.
They engage with timely, relevant, and innovative research methodologies in their practice.
They demonstrate a strong commitment to advancing their technical skills.
Their applications reflect a clear potential for further artistic growth and evolution.

We congratulate Romy Rüegger and Monika Kováčová on their selection and look forward to welcoming them to Villa Romana in 2025.

Romy Rüegger

Romy Rüegger, is an artist and researcher, invested in questions at the intersection of the environmental and the disembodied and their techno-politics of visibilities. Her work is based on listening and reading practices, site visits and the confrontation of visual and audio source material and results in performances, multi-channel audio installations, choreographed spaces, site-specific interventions, gatherings and publications. Language is engaged as touch and encounters, that document politics of memories, unsettled lives and deaths.

Recent performances and exhibitions include ‘Cliché no Protagonist [accountable]’ (Kloental Triennale, 2024), ‘Your centre doesn’t interest me’ (Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe 2024), ‘Approaching Ultra Light’ (ARé Performing Arts Festival, Yerevan 2023), ‘Synthetic Stream Plays’ (Museum Tinguely, Basel 2022/2023), ‘The Music They Couldn’t Keep From Sounding’ (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 2022). A monograph with her performance scripts was published by Archive Books and Scriptings in 2018, an artist record by Apparent Extent in 2024.

Her work has been supported and renumerated with international grants and residencies. She regularly teaches seminars and workshops at art academies and in self-organised contexts, engaging artistic research and performance practices.

Romy Rüegger, Approaching Ultra Light, performance still, ARé Performing Arts Festival, Yerevan 2023. Photo: Ed Tadevossian

Romy Rüegger, Approaching Ultra Light, performance video still, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe 2021. Camera: Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun

Monika Kováčová

Monika Kováčová (*1992, Tekovské Lužany) is an artist and music producer whose work focuses on material agency. Her work engages with themes of queer identity, minority politics and racial inequality, articulated through a mythopoetic language that bridges past and present while highlighting the fragmented nature of ancestral histories. She engages blacksmithing—a historically Roma craft—as a critical space for reimagining existence, tracing the intertwined histories of materials, confronting their complex legacies, and crafting new mythologies through an imaginative language. In her search for utopia, furthermore display symbolism and organic sculptures which intertwined with natures of rural & escapist lives. She studied at Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and exhibited at institutions such as AQB Project Space in Budapest, Karlin Studios – CCA Futura in Prague, Volkstheater Wien, Jedna Dva Tři Gallery in Prague, Galerie Holešovická Šachta, Galerie NTK, etc.

Monika Kováčová sound performance

Her solo musical project 3C 273 is primarily based on pipe organ. Her compositions combine harmony and textural minimalism through synthetic and acoustic instruments in repetitive and longer movements with rhythmic elements intertwined. Sampled sound is repurposed in loops and fragmented into new forms that combine a fragile approach with an exploration of the boundaries of sonic extremes. With a recent foray into DJing, 3C 273 fusing experimental eclecticism with pop sensibilities