Newsletter  166
April 2019

After four dry, warm winter months, we finally got the spring rains. Nature is in a state of excitement.
We are looking forward to our first residents of this year (we are nearly fully booked) and are in full action for the events that we are organizing.

If you can: please put June 6, 6pm in your agenda. We will probably have two exhibition openings and a dance performance.

For Rob Monaghan (Ireland) we are organizing an exhibition in the INATEL Gallery in Évora (June-July). He in 2017and 2018 explored the abandoned marble quarries with photography, video, collecting “found objects” and by swimming in some of the quarry lakes.
Although several more works will be exhibited, with no doubt the central piece will be a video showing a performance by Phyllis Akinyi (Denmark), partly staying at the edge of a ravine and partly standing in a lake. Rob created a highly artistic staging and Phyllis made a breath-taking performance. The video will get a sound composition by Miguel Noya (Venezuela), who also last year had a residency with us.

Also in the INATEL Gallery, but in another place Katharina Fröschl-Roßboth will have a photo-exhibition. During several residencies in different countries Katharina made photo portraits of 31-years old women. She focussed on their daily life and on the feeling of many women that an age of round 31 is a turning point. In 2017 in Portugal Katharina did several beautiful photo-projects, all worth to be presented. But this exhibition is about “31”. One of the portraits is of Mara, an Évora based fado singer.

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Also good to know:

Cody Healy-Connely (USA) told us that his short animation movie Glitch Noir has been selected for the fourth time for screening in a film festival. This time it will be in the United Arab Emirates. The movie is a thriller about malfunctioning drones. Cody made it during his residency in OBRAS-Holland.

Also good news is coming from Sherry Wiggins (USA). The work that she made together with Luís Branco (Portugal) in 2017 has been selected for the Month of Photography in Colorado  (9 March- 7 April; Redline galery, Denver). Sherry and Luís had a project in nature near to OBRAS-Portugal. Sherry was the model and Luís the photographer, but it became much more: a contemplation on human/nature relations and a kind of registration of a site-specific performance, dedicated to nature embracing a middle aged woman.
Sherry will have two residencies at OBRAS in 2019, one in Portugal and one in Holland.

Nature Intimes was the title of an exhibition of Natalie Magniez (MPTVA, Ville D´Avray, France; from 29 January until 23 February). Natalie had a residency at OBRAS Portugal in October last year. Apart from some smaller works she made two very big paintings, one figurative and one abstract. Both are powerful, personal and beautiful and between figuration and abstraction. In her residency she explored “the space between”: between past and future, between being a daughter and a mother. She tried to portray her awareness of passage, transmission and heritage. This body of work is presented in this exhibition together with other works of the past two years.

Karen Bernard, a New York based dancer/performer/choreographer, had a nice interview in Movement Research (click here to read). The article tells about Poolside, a work that she largely created during her residency at OBRAS in October 2018. She granted us an impressive try out for a multimedia installation that was shown in February in Chashama, New York. In the interview Karen tells about the content of Poolside, the making of and her vision on the career of a dancer. 

White Works was the title for an exhibition with Phil Moody (USA) in the Palácio dos Marqueses da Praia e Montforte, in Estremoz. Information is on the residents 2018 page. A beautiful catalogue is available at OBRAS and the artist.
Part of the exhibition will soon be shown in several locations in South Carolina (USA). This is the result of a statewide contest in which Phil gained the second price. Congrats, Phil!
Phil started a collaboration with Luís Lopes and Ruben Martins of the GeoScience department of Évora University. He may produce a book together with them.

In February Phyllis Akinyi (Denmark) had a dance performance, accompanied by Stephan Jarl on percussion: (Bådteatret, Nyhavn 16, 1051 Kopenhagen). Phyllis developed this performance partly during her residency in 2018.
The performance dealt with identity, cultural roots and tradition. Phyllis is a Danish / Kenyan performer who works mainly as flamenco dancer in Scandinavia and Spain. In this performance she mixed flamenco with Scandinavian post-modernity and Kenyan ritual dance in a quest for her own identity.
Phyllis will return to Portugal in June, this year in the scope of an exhibition by Rob Monaghan and for a performance.

Jacobien de Rooij (Holland) got a once-in-a-lifetime message: the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) will buy five of her pastel crayon drawings. Two of them are x-sized. The Rijksmuseum is one of the most prestigious museums of Holland. It has a large collection of drawings and concluded that for a historical overview Jacobien de Rooij´s work is essential in this collection.   
Since 2004 Jacobien de takes nearly every year a residency at OBRAS since 2014. We organized exhibitions for her in 2006, 2011 and 2017. The one in 2011 (together with Erik Mattijssen) attracted 3000 visitors. An impression of the 2017 exhibition, including the opening, is in this video clip: