Newsletter  194
October 2020

OBRAS re-opened in August, although in a new normal. See the corona page for more info.
This newsletter highlights some of the residents and their projects in September. Earlier residencies are in Residents 2020.

Monica de Miranda (Portugal) had residencies at OBRAS for almost 10 years. This year she visited us in June and for a short period in August, and she intends to return in October. Her art work generally takes the form of videos incorporated in installations. Her current two focal points in her residency are violence against women and the impact that slavery still has nowadays. In her June residency she was considering whether she could use the destruction of the landscape by marble quarrying as a metaphor for violence against women. And in her August residency she did research on the history of slavery in the Alentejo in the 16th-19th century.  Her artist talk was informal but impressive and made us very curious to next steps.

Osamu Giovanni Micico (Japan, currently living in Florence) came to experience landscape painting en plein air. He enjoyed it even although it was challenging due to wind, insects and variable light. It resulted in a series of oil paintings and charcoal sketches, of which he presented a selection at his artist talk (see slide show).
However, the highlight of his residency was Osamu`s discovery that in 1584 for Japanese student-priests have visited the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa, 30 kms from our residency. Osamu decided that this will become the subject of a new series of paintings in which he intends to combine historical and contemporary aspects of intercultural contacts. The Bragança Foundation, owner of the Ducal Palace intends to support this project. Also the Municipality of Év0ra showed interest in being involved. An exhibition is considered that will show paintings by Osamu in combination with historical artifacts. The intention is to make it a traveling exhibition starting in Portugal in 2023 and continuing in 2024 in Italy and Japan.  More info will follow.  

Elly Heisse (Canada) came to prepare an installation for her next exhibition. She made photos and drawings and designed a set up. Elly tries to visualize blurring borders between the human body and nature. She made, for instance, small drawings of creatures that are partly tree and partly human limps. Another fascination is to play with dimensions and sizes. She combined landscape photos with the blood veins network of the retina of her own eyes.  And she was deeply impressed by the inhuman dimensions of abandoned marble quarries.

Mia Bailey (Australia, currently living in Germany) came to work on her second artist book and began a third one. For the last few years, she has been investigating ways to combine her long-term practice as a professional visual artist with her writing, moving away from video work to a combination of image and text. An overall theme in her art is the experience of looking and seeing: what of the world that surrounds us do we know? To what extent are we trapped in our culture and conventions?
At OBRAS, she completed her second artists' book, based on images from dreams that she had during the time of the residency. Working with simple materials (paper, foam board and found objects) and taking photos with a mobile phone, she produced images that evoked the colour, texture, and symbolic patterning of dreams, rather than being directly illustrative. In her artists' talk, she spoke about experimenting with different ways of integrating narrative and fiction in her new body of work. 

Nazaré Soares (Spain) was working on I am Half Sick of Shadows: an audio-visual composition based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Bells.  She defines her work as a “Cinematic Ceremony”: abstract in image, sounds and narratives, but with lots of associations for those who are open for them.
A young woman walks quietly through a constantly vibrating cave, on music related to the seven tantric chakras. The cave can be seen as womb, a shelter and a space where one feels the feminine energy of origins. The walk is an immersion of body and senses, and may symbolize processes of mourning, searching for vital cycles and a navigation to an unknown future. It bears a transformation, but towards where?, towards what?
Nazaré was deeply inspired by Pego do Sino, also known as the Canyon of the Bells. It is a biodiversity hotspot, but also a place full of history and legends. Nazaré is looking for ways to include it in her Cinematic Ceremony.

Clarisse Baleja Saidi was working on the finishing touch of her novel that tells about the dramatic life of an West-African woman surmounting her fears and traumas, experiences partly due to the realities around her and partly due to her troubled mind. Baleja spent most of her artist talk on reading parts of this novel, which caused an in-depth discussion on coping with trauma.

Baleja also worked on a collection of lyrical essays. She writes into the multiple consciousness of African women in the Americas, and explores racism, patriotism, body language and beauty ideals. In this trans-cultural context she also contemplates on the blurred line between mental illness and spiritual awakenings.  

Baleja was born in Ivory Coast to a Rwandan-Ugandan mother and Congolese father, and had her university education in Canada and the United States. She is considering moving to Portugal.

Helen Butler had a residency in May-June and came back for a residency in August-October. Her paintings are fascinating: mysterious harmony and yet vivid, nearly monochromatic and yet a richness in tints, fragile and yet powerful. Helen continued making her intriguing paintings, adapting her color spectrum in response to surrounding nature and skies. And she started experimenting with transparencies.
She had artist talks with studio visit on 20 June, 25 August and 26 September. The slideshow above and the video below gives impressions of her work in progress.

Margreet den Buurman (Holland) came to OBRAS-Holland with two goals: as a Thomas Mann specialist, she was completing her new title: Women around Thomas Mann, or The eternal Tristan.
Her second goal was starting a book on her great-uncles Willem and Pieter de Zwart. Both were painters working in impressionist style. For their en plein air landscape painting they moved in the beginning of the 20th century to the Veluwe. They participated in a painters colony that had a meeting point in Vila Ana, some 100 meters from the OBRAS residency.
Like her great-uncles some 100 years ago, Margreet got impressed and inspired by the local landscape. It was a great help for her writing that the experienced herself what may have moved her great-uncles. 
The slideshow has some historical photos of the painters and gives an impression of the landscape.

Fien Veldman (Holland) was working on her first novel (she was already awarded multiple times for essays and short stories).
The novel tells about a young woman with a low-level job in an office. Her task is to print out letters, put them in envelopes, and send them. She’s alienated from society, has a difficult personality, lacks friends and suffers from a rare allergy. Because of this, she developed the habit of talking to her printer. At first, her colleagues think she’s making a lot of phone calls. Later on, her boss discovers the truth and diagnosed a burn-out. She felt badly understood as she was so proud of herself to have discovered the sender of a mysterious package that was wrongly sent to her.
A deeper layer in the story is a contemplation on our inner and outer world and how they are intertwined. It is a tragic, absurdist story, but told with humour.
Fien also proved to be gifted singer. She granted us a short, intimate open-air concert next to her house.   

From 7 until 13 September Teatro Griot, a theatre group from Lisbon had rehearsals for O riso dos necrófagos (see below for the participants).
The play tells about the Batepá massacre in 1953 in São Tomé, a former Portuguese Island in the Atlantic Ocean. Hundreds of forros (native creoles) were massacred by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners. The forros were mostly cacao farmers and refused to work as contract laborers on the building projects of the Portuguese governor. Initially these projects were meant to improve living conditions and local economy, but turned into megalomaniac buildings.
The governor considered this unrest to be a communistic conspiracy and mobilised the army and workers from Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde to stop the protests. This quickly turned into a bloodbath: hundreds of forros were killed, tens were burned alive or tortured to death. Most bodies were dumped in the sea. 
The governor was forced to return to Lisbon where he was praised and got a promotion. Seven forros were convicted for killing two police men. An official investigation proved that there was no communist conspiracy.

The premiere will be on 12 February in Culturgest, Lisbon. In 2021 it will tour through Portugal and abroad.
Participants are: Directing, text, staging and acting: Zia Soares. Actors: Benvindo Fonseca, Vera Cruz, Marcus Veiga, Binete Undonque, Daniel Martinho and Gio Lourenço. Music: Mick Trovoada. Composition, sound design and acting: Nuno Solares. Scenery and costumes: Neusa Trovoada. Choreography: Lucília Raimundo. Video and photography: António Castelo and Sofia Berberan.
The project is co-produced by Griot and Culturgest.

Other residents in October are Veridiana Leite (painter; Brasil), Nazaré Soares (filmmaker, Norway/Spain) and in OBRAS Holland Zofia Tomczyk (performer; Poland).
Their projects will be presented in a next update of this newsletter.