Vera Ryklova is an artist who works across performance, photography, moving image and installation, and has been developing her practice since 2015.

Vera’s practice has been supported through a number of awards and residencies, including the Annual

Studio Space Residency at the International Centre for the Image, Dublin (2026), the Artist Studios

Residency at The Dean Art Studios, Dublin (2022-2024) and the Visual Arts Bursary from The Arts Council (2023). She received an Irish Talent nomination from PhotoIreland (2020) and represented Ireland as part of FUTURES, a European photography platform. She won the Hotron ART WORKS Prize for work by a recent graduate (2017) and was shortlisted for the Hennessy Portrait Prize (2016).

Her work is held in the public collections of The Arts Council, the Office of Public Works, Photo Museum Ireland, and Trinity College Dublin, and has been featured in photography and art publications.

She has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions across Ireland and the UK, including at the National Gallery of Ireland (Dublin), VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art (Carlow), Triskel Arts Centre (Cork), Cultúrlann Mc Adam Ó Fiaich (Belfast), Custom House Studios + Gallery (Westport), PhotoIreland Festival (Dublin), Photo Museum Ireland (Dublin), GOMA Gallery (Waterford), and the FiLiA Feminist Conference (London and Manchester).

In her practice Vera often uses her own body as a medium, setting her work against diverse spatial

contexts, ranging from domestic and rural sites to symbolic terrains. Grounded in lived experience and moral complexity, her work presents the body as both an intimate and cultural site, often exposing a conflict between these two realities. Her process is highly experimental. She integrates research with her own lived experience to build a subject for the viewer to explore, one that she allows to continually evolve. This approach uses her practice as a distancing device that may allow her, and the viewer, to experience catharsis through the emotional landscape she creates.

Originally from the Czech Republic, Vera moved to Ireland in 2007, where she later began her artistic practice and proudly identifies as an Irish artist. Based in Dublin, she has also lived in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny. She holds an MA in Art + Research Collaboration (2021) and a BA (Hons) in Photography (2015), both from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.