Newsletter  182
January 2020

Lambs are bleating and almonds are blossoming. Spring starts early in Portugal. We have selected the residents for 2020 and are working on the two exhibitions of this year: The Mirror between us, with Sherry Wiggins and Luís Branco, and Ressonâncias da Terra, with Ingrid Simons.
This newsletter tells about some of the last residents of 2019 and their projects. Earlier residencies are on page residents 2019.

Maria Hannson (Sweden) is singer and performative artist. “Natural Opera” was the title her project. She came to OBRAS to explore her voice: to go beyond singing genres and find her expression in the performative arts. Maria brought several masks to perform with. The mask changes the perception of the voice, both for the audience and for herself. She showed this in a short performance in the hallway of our house.
Maria got some unique experiences. One was singing while (voluntarily) been locked up in the fortress of Evoramonte. But most were in abandoned marble quarries. In two she danced, partly in the water and in another she had a photo shoot with Pedro Ferro. Almost certainly these experiences will have follow ups in Sweden or elsewhere.

Karen Bernard (USA) is a dancer and performance artist. She created and executed a beautiful performance about trauma due to a murder. In minimalistic movements Karen played the roles of victim, witness and murderer.  Central in the scene was a costume from her past, a bright yellow and black body suit. The costume is more than an object in the crime scene. It has a personality that has experienced physical terror. In fact there were more participants in this performance. One was a colleague dancer: Lisa Parra, who was filmed some time ago dancing in the same body suit and now projected on the wall. In fact Karin and Lisa were doing a duet. The other participants were the audience. They were sitting on stage in a formation that is standard for the members of a grand jury in a juridical trial.

Sherry Wiggins (USA) came to prepare her exhibition The Mirror Between Us, that is scheduled for April, May 2020 in the Igreja de São Vicente in Évora. This former church is beautiful but also dominant in its architecture. Sherry took sufficient time to find a lay-out in which her works do not compete, merely integrate and may be even communicate with the building. The exhibition will show a compilation of photos that Luís Branco made in an intense collaboration with Sherry in the past four years. She had several brainstorms with him and other residents on title, brochure text and the selection of works.     

Iosef Yusupov and Yelena Yusupova came to work on designs for theatre productions in Azerbaijan and China. Although Iosef and Yelena live in Manhattan and work worldwide, they strongly feel their roots: Iosef was born in Tajikistan and his ancestors came from Spain and Morocco. Yelena is from Saint Petersburg.
Iosef is set designer, especially for opera productions, but also for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Soshi (2014). In their artist talk he showed the scale models and the making of. Yelena is costume designer. They share a passion for painting. They brought and exhibited ten drafts of posters, all hand painted, for events they were involved in. They clearly show the Eastern influence, especially of the Russian avant-garde of the beginning of the 20th century.  

Sahar Gilani (UK) came to OBRAS-Holland to feel solitude, nature and space to create her art, especially as she felt trapped within the boundaries of a city. Inspired by the works of Francesca Woodman she created a body of work surrounding her identity and relationship with nature, using herself and surroundings as the subject.

Xinjian and Shan Du (China, currently living in Canada) had a residency in OBRAS-Holland. Assisted by Shan, Xinjian made a large body of work. In his paintings he vaguely suggests narratives and art historical references, but first of all he tried to visualize his perception on human existence and as part of it his environmental concern. Thanks to Robert Kamphuis, Xinjian got the opportunity to exhibit part of his work in a gallery of Wageningen University (Impulse; until 21 November).

Cello player Beate Schnaithmann (Germany, currently living in Switzerland) came for rehearsals of her trio with Mauro Dilemma and Andreia Vaz, which was formed in April this year. They gave a very beautiful concert: see elsewhere on this page.
Beate spent most of her only free day on a visit to an abandoned marble quarry. And she played the cello at sunset: see the slideshow and be impressed.     

Richie Mendelsohn (USA) was making sound and music compositions, using both the available music instruments and his own electronic equipment. One was “requiem for a snail”, made after he accidentally stepped on it. He also gave us some insight of the way he was composing.

Also nice to know:

Although the residency program of 2020 only starts in April, we made a few exceptions. The first residents will arrive later this month. In Portugal these are Vintani Nafassi, a musician/dancer from Mozambique and Carla Gonzalez, scientist in Rural Planning from Portugal. Both are currently living in Cape Town, South Africa. In OBRAS Holland the first resident will be is Sharyn Bachleda,  photographer from the USA..

After she returned of her residency Jona Ray (India) wrote a beautiful piece about her Portuguese experiences in Indian Express

Until 18 January Scott Wixon (USA) shows some of the works of his residency in October 1019 in the group exhibition: ABSTRACTIONS / METAPHORS in Darcia Gallery (53 Stanton St. New York).

“Around 31” was the name of the exhibition with Katharina Fröschl-Roßboth (Austria) that we organised in in Évora in April 2019. This exhibition can now be seen in Vienna (Schaustelle Margaretenstraße 106, until 31 January).
The exhibition deals with the independency of young women. During several residencies in different countries Katharina made seven photo portraits of 31-years old women. She focused on their daily life and on the feeling of many women that an age of round 31 is a turning point. One of the portraits is of Mara, an Évora based fado singer. In the 2019 page is a slideshow with images of this exhibition.

In September 2018 Dany Diaz (Honduras, currently living in San Salvador) was working on a book that now has been published: La Quebrada tells twelve stories about village in Honduras. It is about daily life and family tragedies, as well as about ruthless criminal events. But above all it about people who still have hope and goodwill and manage to make a place for emerge on the horizon.

The past few years we produced most of our vegetables in a permaculture garden. In addition, in 2019 we got interested in the concept of a food forest : it brings a better micro climate (more shadow, lower temperature, less wind), it gives less work and needs less water than a flower garden, it attracts birds, reduces our CO2 foot print and provides local and seasonal food (fruit, nuts, olives).
Even although our ambition is not a forest, but just some 15 more trees around the house, the realisation proves to be quite a project: much of the land around our house is very rocky. To plant one tree generally means to build a border of some 50 cm high containing a large volume of soil.
Now we are about half way. To celebrate this milestone we planted already the crown jewel: a 150 years old olive tree.  See the slide show.