Zoöp Connections 2026

A Zoöp is an organisation that includes more-than-human life – plants, animals, ecosystems – as a stakeholder in its own decision-making. Building on a successful first year, Zoöp Connections returns in 2026 with six international residencies hosted by Dutch Zoöps.

Initiated by EUNIC Netherlands in collaboration with the Zoöp network, the programme invites artists, designers, curators and researchers from across Europe to spend up to a month embedded within organisations that are learning to act in reciprocity with the living world. Together, the residents explore how cultural practice can contribute to regeneration — not by representing nature from a distance, but by developing new ways of noticing, observing, designing and collaborating as part of a shared ecology.

Want to follow along or get involved? Several residencies include public events open to everyone , dates are listed below. Follow @eunic.netherlands on Instagram for updates as each residency unfolds, or get in touch if you’d like to hear about future editions.

The residencies

Six residencies, six different practices — all asking some version of the same underlying question: how can cultural work help us notice and relate differently to the living world?

Nahun Saldaña

Instituto Cervantes × Creative Coding Utrecht × Artphy Groningen 29 June – 19 July 2026 · Public event: 10 July

Peruvian-born sound artist Nahun Saldaña approaches sound as a medium of resistance, connecting political, biological and social realities. Drawing from sound ecology, experimental music and climate-related research, his practice explores how listening can reveal hidden relationships between people, environments and technologies. His work has been presented across Peru, Spain, France and Mexico. Field recording, bioacoustics, and composition meet environmental science; listening as a way of noticing what’s slipping away. While in Utrecht, Nahun aims to help us hear the living world of the Hof van Cartesius using local bio-data and low-energy electronics 

Vilma Vanhanen

Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux × Nieuwe Instituut / Buitenplaats Brienenoord 1 September – 1 October 2026

Image: Laetitia Delbachian

Vilma Vanhanen is a Finnish multidisciplinary spatial artist, designer and a feminist whose work is driven by the question “why?”. She is currently finishing her master‛s studies in Interior Architecture in Aalto University, with a topic on performance art as a research method—the politics of building demolition materials. Her work investigates themes around injustice, trauma, empathy and freedom combining activism, site-specific spatial installations, material exploration and neurodivergent bodily experience. 

Vilma found her true self after the realization she could combine her spatial knowledge with contemporary visual practices. Her performative work “GROTE BERG 13 – Creating an urban duckweed farm in a vacant plot” (2025) was shown in Oodi library, Helsinki as a part of an Ääniaalto art festival. Vilma has also performed her work “Watch me on Insta live, when I discard myself!!!” (2025) in an art festival in Itäkeskus, Helsinki. Last summer Vilma and her dear friend Sini Hintsala designed the Aalto university graduation exhibition of Baltic reed that was featured in Dezeen magazine.

Mia Milgrom & Ella Prokkola

Two residencies unfold side by side this autumn at Kunstfort Vijfhuizen, each approaching questions of fragility and coexistence from a different angle.

Mia Milgrom — Czech Centre × Kunstfort Vijfhuizen 15 September – 15 October 2026

Image: Jan Hromádko

Mia Milgrom is an artist and curator based in Prague, Czech Republic. In her work she is fascinated by the tension created by unstable and troubled environments, systems of support and the increasingly exhausted relations of the human and nonhuman world. Her sculptures and installations oscillate between the fragile moment of falling apart and an intuitive symbiosis of the elements. Her works have been exhibited at GHMP, Fait Gallery, Rudolfinum, the 4th Tbilisi Triennial, at the Cooper Union in New York and others. She co-runs an independent artist space and gallery in Prague, Garage Gallery.

Ella Prokkola — Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux × Kunstfort Vijfhuizen 15 September – 15 October 2026

Image: Lewis Beauchamp

Ella Prokkola is a landscape architect who graduated from Aalto University, Finland, in 2023, following studies at Aalto and ENSP Versailles in France. Her work focuses on the climate and biodiversity crises, exploring the impacts of the posthuman paradigm on landscape architecture and advocating for multispecies thinking within construction culture. Her practice involves participating in collectives and working groups for projects with partners such as the Helsinki City Museum, Finnish Architecture Museum, Saari Residence, Vares Space, EASA network and the Sheaf Porter Trust. As an educator, she has taught landscape architecture at Aalto University and conducted workshops for both students and professionals in the UK, Switzerland, Estonia, and Finland. Her current projects examine cartography, model making and architectural graphics as tools for multispecies storytelling. She is a laureate of the IN SITU program 2024-2025 in Cité internationale des arts.

Maryna Levchenko

Ukrainian Institute × Mediamatic × De Ceuvel 24 September – 23 October 2026 · Public talks at Domo and Mediamatic

Maryna Levchenko lives and works in Lviv. She works with visual media, including graphics, painting, photography, video art and installations. Her practice explores space, human fragility, memory and the feeling of home. Her work often combines architectural and natural heritage with traditional crafts, textiles, plastics and recycled materials in order to investigate the relationship between the individual experience and nature. Maryna studied graphic design at the Lviv Polytechnic National University and architecture at the Taras Shevchenko State Art School, before continuing her studies via international programmes and courses dedicated to visual art, urbanism and video art.

About Zoöp Connections
Zoöp Connections is a networked learning programme initiated by EUNIC Netherlands in collaboration with the Dutch Zoöp network. Each residency contributes not only to the host organisation and resident, but to a wider European conversation about how cultural institutions can strengthen their relationship with the living world.