Newsletter  199
April 2021

The Gum Rose is flowering every where. It´s Springtime in Alentejo and we have started the residency season of 2021. 
For an impression of residencies in 2020 check the 2020 page . More info on the current situation and our policy concerning Covid is on our covid page.

Sherry Wiggins (USA) and Luís Branco (Portugal) won the first price with "Outside Woman", a photo from a great body of work shot in 2019 at OBRAS and surroundings. The winning photo is now shown in the group exhibition "Eye of the Camera - MYTHS AND LEGENDS" at Littleton Museum, Colorado USA (19 March - 24 April).
The photo will also be shown in Portugal, although only in 2022, as part of “The Mirror between Us”, a large duo-exhibition by Sherry Wiggins and Luís Branco (Igreja de S Vicente, Évora, April, May 2022): see this page for more info on this exhibition.

At the moment, Sherry has a second to celebrate: she finished her book The Unknown Heroine. It is now in print. An exhibition on this project will be at Michael Warren Contemporary (Denver, USA) from March 9th to April 17th, during Month of Photography.
The Unknown Heroine is a project of performative photography by Sherry (performer) and Luis Branco (photographer), that was executed in 2019 in the residence of OBRAS-Holland. The images suggest to portray a middle aged woman that dreams of a grand and compelling life, but is trapped in her role as housewife: she seems to doubt whether this is caused by society or by herself. She lives in a confusing mix of facts and fantasies, of existential wishes and of deep fears.
The project is deeply inspired by the work of Claude Cahun (1894 – 1954), a French feminist and surrealist multi-media artist. In her book Sherry writes a letter to Claude Cahun. Cydney Payton contributed with an essay on the work of Sherry.
The Unknown Heroine is part of a cluster of projects on performative photography that Sherry executed with Luís Branco over a period of 6 years. Another part will be exhibited in 2022 in Évora (see this page).   

Ingrid Simons was scheduled to have an exhibition in 2020 in the prestigious Galeria D. Dinis of the Municipal museum of Estremoz, but COVID made this impossible. So, we rescheduled it to April-June 2021. But some days ago we decided together with the director of the Museum and Ingrid that also this new period is too optimistic. It will now be in spring 2022.
It is such a pity, because the exhibition of 2020 was also meant to be a celebration of her tenth residency: see the video for an impression. The exhibition will show a compilation of earlier works, but emphasizes her recent developments.
Ingrid paints half-abstract landscapes. Her Portuguese experiences had a profound impact on her approach and style. Her aim is to deconstruct her first impressions and then reconstructing a new reality which reveals the essence of the landscape. In recent years Ingrid shifted from interpreting nature to experiencing nature. As a result, she now paints more intuitively. Her landscapes have become more abstract in form and color.
Although her specialty is painting, Ingrid also experiments with ceramics, video and most recently with textile prints.

With seven actors and a technical crew of three, Mónica de Miranda (Portugal) is now shooting her film A ILJA: a visual poem on the unknown history of slavery in Alentejo, Portugal. One of the actors is her daughter Jara.
Mónica came in December and February for selecting sites and other pre-production activities. Most of the screening is done in April, at OBRAS and direct surroundings. Her film is full of metaphors, including the damage to nature caused by marble quarrying as a metaphor for the damage of black lives. Also, an actor is carrying a suitcase with soil and water from his home country.  

Léon Biezeman returned to OBRAS Holland and experienced a special time, not only because of the COVID lockdown, but also because it was the snowiest and coldest period (-15 o C) in two decades. Good for him that it was sunny, so good for winter walks. Léon came to start writing his second book for dyslectic children. It is about a kid that very much enjoys his holidays at the grandparents, But he has strange experiences when looking at the newspaper, when picking a box with flower bulbs … These are his first steps in a voyage towards understanding.
He hopes to finish it during a residency in 2022 at OBRAS-Portugal. His first book, which he was working on during his previous residency, will be launched in September 2021.  

Gerry van der Linden came OBRAS Holland to work on a new anthology: Alles is vroeger. The title is in Dutch and difficult to translate because of a double meaning. It refers to both  Everything comes from the Past and All is Earlier than Usual.
The poems are about what has been and comes back and never leaves, about the tension due to everything meshing together and falling apart, which causes us, humans, a loss of control over ourselves and our environment. It is a total reset of everything we have taken for granted until now.
The collection of poems will be released by the publisher Nieuw Amsterdam, in summer 2021.

Cody Healey-Conelly had several residencies at OBRAS. The latest was in 2019 were he made a prototype for a series of video installations. They consist of a heap of foam objects, symbolic for American excess: weapons, e-phones, fast food cups etc. On some forty of these objects he projects videos of historical events, sometimes different on each individual surface, sometimes merged to one image. Cody assumes the installation “an abstract meditation on US history. Like a living, breathing, time-capsule.”
Cody´s first installation: Dementia Americana focused on consumerism, environment and politics. His second installation: Dangerous Narratives, was exhibited until 21 February 2021 in Selenas Mountain (63 Woodward Ave, Ridgewood, New York). It refers to the social justice protests of last summer, Trump’s exit from the oval office and the pandemic.

In March - April, Antonio Tavares is working, especially to make paintings in sizes that are too big for his own studio. 

And finally: a phase has ended. About 15 minutes from OBRAS is an abandoned train station. It will soon be converted into tourists´ apartments.
The building tells about a history of well over 100 years. Some artists in residence gave it a second live. The past ten years it was the venue of site specific happenings and photo shoots, and its walls were used for some highly artistic murals. The page on man-made structures in nature gives an impression.