2025 Artist Grant & Growth Initiative Shortlist

Nicolás Blanco (2001, Mexico City) is a Mexican visual artist whose practice is primarily rooted in painting and sculpture. He studied a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda” (ENPEG) and furthered his training at the Universidad de las Artes de Yucatán (UNAY).

His research focuses on working with matter in its essence, constructing narratives that emerge from materiality itself and the processes that shape it, observing its behavior and its potential to contain and generate meaning. Through direct experimentation, he seeks to reveal both its physical qualities and its symbolic resonances. In his work, materials cease to function merely as supports and instead become interlocutors, understood not only as a medium but also as an end in themselves.

Barry Iverson is a former TIME Magazine photographer covering the Middle East for 27 years from 1981-2007. He photographed all of the major events of the region for a quarter century, including such paradigm changing events such as the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the aftermath of September 11, coup d’etats, archaeology and famine.

Iverson is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1985, after two years of research at Harvard University and the Harvard Semitic Museum, he won a Fulbright Scholarship to research the history of photography in Egypt, and concurrently taught photography at the American University in Cairo during the 1985-86 academic year.

Iverson’s personal work references the Near East and his practice is rooted in the New Topographics movement of the 1970s, and further shaped by photographic history, documentary work and cinematic influences.

Olga Kliukina (Big Kate)  a self-taught mixed media and digital artist whose work bridges the physical and digital realms. Combining tactile acrylic painting with digital transformation, she explores themes of change, emotional depth, and the balance between technology and nature. Art is her life—it is how she process experiences, connect with others, and translate emotion into form. Originally from Siberia, she has lived in Thailand for over ten years, and this journey between two worlds deeply shapes her perspective on contrast and adaptation. Kliukina's works have been exhibited internationally, including in Barcelona, and featured in Arts to Hearts Magazine (Issue 9) and International Art Awards. Through art, she invite viewers into intricate, ethereal spaces where vulnerability and strength, the organic and the technological, coexist in harmony, reflecting the beauty and resilience of transformation.

Dr. Ryan Montoya, MD is a board-certified Family Medicine physician and the Physician Medical Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade. A Harvard University graduate, he also completed studies at MIT and Johns Hopkins before earning his medical degree and residency at the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Montoya has provided full-spectrum primary care and addiction treatment in Massachusetts, practiced Family Medicine in Bosnia, India and Russia, and served as Associate Medical Director at Planned Parenthood in Washington, DC.

Beyond medicine, he is a professional comic book artist and writer with work published in The New England Journal of Medicine and Scientific American. Trained at the Massachusetts College of Art, the Art Institute of Boston, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Joe Kubert School, he has also designed luxury luggage for Goyard and project managed Fashion Fairs in Copenhagen and Paris.

Sully Romero Ordoñez is a glass artist and social researcher whose work explores the intersections between memory, identity, and resistance. Her practice is defined using glass as a symbolic medium — fragile yet persistent, transparent yet charged with history.

She has participated in the Ibero-American Glass Biennial (Costa Rica 2022, Oaxaca 2024) and in collective exhibitions addressing themes of migration and Latin American roots, inspired by movements such as Impressionism and Kinetic Art —a movement of great influence in Venezuela, the country where she grew up. Through techniques such as casting and pâte de verre, Romero fuses material delicacy with profound social narratives.

Her work is nourished by her journey across countries and cultures, and by a constant search for reconciliation between beauty and wound. She is currently developing They Did Nothing, a project that turns glass into both testimony of Venezuelan resistance and a universal metaphor for human fragility in the face of violence.

Pooja Shinde (1992, India) a Mumbai-based printmaker and visual artist. Her practice centers on etching as a way to explore layered narratives of urban architecture. The philosophy of wabi-sabi guides much of her approach to embrace transience, erosion, and the subtle beauty found in imperfection and time-worn surfaces.

Shinde completed BFA in Painting (2016) and MFA in Printmaking (2018) from Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai. She has been honoured with several recognitions, including the Young Artist Scholarship in Visual Arts from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. Her work has been exhibited in the galleries across India and internationally, participated in various workshops, printmaking camps, and artist residencies.

Alongside her studio practice, she works as a visiting faculty at different design institutes and conduct workshops in a range of printmaking techniques. Shinde currently lives and practices in Mumbai.

Estifanos Solomon (1995, Ethiopia) is a visual artist from Ethiopia, based in Addis Ababa, with exploration on themes of passion, conflict, and personal narrative. His artistic journey began at the Russian Centre for Science and Culture (2014), where he developed foundational skills in art. He later earned a diploma in painting from Entoto Polytechnic College (2018) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from the Addis Ababa University Alle School of Fine Arts and Design (2022). 

Through painting and printmaking, he weaves together storytelling and his living experience, creating works that invite viewers to engage with deeper emotional and societal reflections. His practice extends beyond the studio into education, having taught in an art academy and led workshops in his own studio. He specializes in guiding beginners, fostering creative confidence, and encouraging artistic exploration in diverse styles, from realism to abstraction.

Vera Tepliakova (2003, Russia) is a visual artist currently based in Georgia. She left Russia in 2022 and has since continued to develop her artistic career independently. Tepliakova works primarily with oil painting and shaped wooden panels, which she cuts and prepares by herself. Her practice combines experimentation with material and form, reflecting her interest in both emotional expression and social context.

Beyza Dilem Topdal (1991, İstanbul) is an artist and a researcher whose practice is rooted in an interdisciplinary interrogation of bodies, technologies, and materialities. She draws on critical theories of cyborg, technoscience, multispecies assemblages and new materialisms to generate new forms of kinship by following the natureculture encounters. Her practice deconstructs and reconstructs local narratives, focusing on other-than-humans and speculative fiction, using various creative technologies in a research-based approach. 

Her practice moves between digital and material processes — from video, artificial intelligence, 3D sculpting and interactive media to embroidery, 3D printing and found objects. Across media, Topdal-İrez constructs “speculative archives” that blur fact and fiction, asking how ecological memory, technological intervention, and material imagination might reshape the ways we live with other-than-human worlds.

Jingyi Zheng (1992, China) is an artist and researcher whose work explores the intersections of ecology, technology, and urban transition. Her practice focuses on “edge ecologies” — fragile forms of non-human life that emerge within vacant lands, fenced lots, and other suspended zones of the city. 

Through installation, video, and site-based study, Zheng investigates how plants and materials act as perceptive and archival agents within systems of speculation and redevelopment. 

Working across digital and physical media, she develops what she calls “ecological texts,” structures that document how nature persists amid cycles of possession and erasure. Her current research examines the politics of naming, maintenance, and visibility within these transitional urban landscapes, revealing how ecological resilience intersects with economic and social uncertainty.