Newsletter  272
March 2025

Almond trees are blossoming and we tuned the piano.
We are looking forward to the residency season of 2025. It will start in the first week of April.

In March Antonio Tavares (visual artist, Portugal) is our first resident, and in April we expect Kimmo Ylõnen (multimedia, Finland), Sharon Bishop (visual artist; UK), Ingrid Simons (visual artist; Holland), Larry Feign (writer; USA, Portugal), Elisabete Marques (poet; Portugal), Lind Buckmaster (poet; USA), Leon Biezeman (writer, Holland), Beate  Schnaithmann (musician; Germany, Switzerland) and Frans van Lent (multimedia; Holland).

Antonio Tavares, a friend and local artist who has residencies at OBRAS twice a year, will have an exhibition of his work in Austria. Four years ago, he met two residents at OBRAS: Anna Maria Achatz and Elisabeth Melkonyan, who run a beautiful art gallery in Innsbrug. They selected Antonio for an exhibition that takes place from 18 March until 12 April in Galerie Nothburga.  He is showing new work that was largely created at OBRAS. Although Antonio exhibits internationally (mainly in Spain), he is excited because Austria in new to him and the gallery is a great place.   

The fox that we spotted for the time in September (during an Open Studio !), is now visiting our house every few days, saying hello to our cats. 

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Evora will become the European Capital of Culture in 2027.  A great achievement and a great challenge for “our” city. According to the jury, key for this victory was the theme that Evora choose: “vagar”, which means wander without hurry. It refers to the vision that “slow” can bring better quality in daily live. 
We intend to participate with a thematic program on “marble” as related to art, architecture, history, landscape, geology and economy. For this we established a fruitful collaboration with the University departments of Geoscience, Arts&Design and Landscape, Environment&Planning, the municipality of Vila Viçosa, the museum of Evora and the Marble sector.
We propose a program covering the whole year of 2027. It will consist of ten exhibitions, ten site specific performances, some field trips and city walks, two symposia and a contest. At this moment we are in the final stage of making appointments with potential partners; all signs are very encouraging and promising.
A draft of the full proposal is available on request. A summary is on this page.

Our proposal will be submitted as soon as the tender opens, which is scheduled for the end of March 2025.
In the scope of preparing this proposal we made a book showing some 60 marble-related projects of OBRAS residents over the past 15 years.   

Also good to know:

James Bell made Catharsis: a 15-minute video exploring his experience of grief, whilst being in various landscapes. A 2.30 minutes extract is on YouTube. The music is from composer-singer Sophie Tassignon (see 2022 and 2024 for info on her residencies).

On 26 September – 4 October Sarah Pedlow will give a workshop on embroidery. Both traditional applications and contemporary art work will be treated. See this page for more info.

In 2026 a group residency is considered: Embodied Geologic Research, guided by Nina Elder (USA). See this page for more info, and www.ninaelder.com for more info on the artist.

Some more about OBRAS:

The annual report on the OBRAS activities in 2024 is now available on request.

More organisational info on OBRAS (goals, codes of Conduct, members of the board) is on this page.

OBRAS is working on a continuation of its activities for the long term. For this, the management will be rejuvenated and the organisational structure will be slightly adapted. It will be done gradually in 2025-2027, to make sure that the residency program will continue largely unchanged.  More information with follow in updates of this newsletter.