Iv Toshain was born in 1980. Her artistic practice is influenced by childhood experiences in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. She studied at the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, completed an MA in the master class of Franz Graf at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, earned a second MA at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and pursued postgraduate studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. Her work has been shown in leading Austrian institutions, including the Belvedere Museum Vienna, Lentos Art Museum Linz, the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) Vienna, the Heidi Horten Collection, Künstlerhaus Vienna and Kunstraum Innsbruck. She presented her first solo museum exhibition in 2021 at MoMA Tbilisi, followed by solo exhibitions at the Rocca Paolina Fortress in Perugia and the National Gallery in Sofia. In 2025/26, she will participate in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India. In 2012, together with Anna Ceeh, she co-founded the ideology-critical artist collective FXXXismTC, which staged guerrilla peace performances at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and at Red Square in Moscow in 2018.
