Newsletter  185
March 2020

Only 5 corona infections have been detected in Alentejo (our province). Positive is also that our centre is isolated in the middle of nature: social distancing can easily be realized. We closely monitor the developments as the health of our residents is our top priority. We are well prepared for all situations.
We start the residency program only by the end of April (or later if new reasons pop up; on 14 April the region will decide if restrictions can be lifted).
We postponed the exhibition of Sherry Wiggins and Luís Branco.

While spring is exceptionally dry and hot we are working on two exhibitions that are scheduled for this year. This newsletter tells about these exhibitions, about the first residents of  2020 and about results of previous residencies.

Vintani Nafassi (Mozambique, currently living in South Africa) is a gifted singer-songriter. His goal is to modernise traditional African music. As a basis he uses melodies from a variety of Southern African states, but also songs that he learned from his grandma. He brought two Mbiras (finger harp) with which he accompanied his singing. And he impressed all by making two African harps and an African guitar, all in a few days and made of left over building materials that he found in Ludger´s workshop. On 16 February he granted us a full concert. His audience was exited. A video impression with soon be published on this website.

Also on 16 February the trio VaDiS (Andreia Vaz: violin, Mauro Dilema: piano and Beate Schnaithman: cello) played a concert dedicated to tango: Peter Ludwig, Astor Piazzolla and Miguel del Aguila. They played full of passion because of the type of music, but surely also because it was the try out for future concerts of this newly born trio. We all felt honored to join it.

Carla Gonzalez (Portugal, currently living in Cape Town, South Africa) is working on a rural development project in a nature reserve in Mozambique. Goal is creating a better future for both nature and people. As Carla knows the local communities from previous projects she is now largely responsible for monitoring the societal results. The communities live a very sustainable life with a near-to-zero-ecological footprint, but their life is also harsh, with risks that are technically avoidable. This makes defining criteria for monitoring the results much more than an administrative job.  
Central theme for Carla is bringing balance. She applies this in her professional and personal life. And in her passion: gong massage (in this case a balance between body and mind; she recently got her certification).  
  

Photographer Sharyn Bachleda (USA) had a residency at OBRAS Holland. Apart from working on a portfolio book with her favorite works of the past four years, she was developing a vision on a new phase in her career. She found the perfect conditions for this job: she found, in her own words, peace in solitude and slowed down.
Sharyn also collaborated with an artist workplace in Arnhem: Plaatsmaken. She used their dark room and wrote a review on one of their exhibitions.

Sherry Wiggins (USA) came to prepare her exhibition The Mirror Between Us, that was scheduled for April, May 2020 in the Igreja de São Vicente in Évora. We just decided (together with the municipality and the artists that it is most realistic not to go for a few weeks, but to postpone this exhibition until next year, probably in the same venue. The Igreja de S. Vicente is beautiful but also dominant in its architecture. Sherry took 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.

Ingrid Simons (Holland) will have an exhibition: Ressonânçia da Terra, in the beautiful Galeria Municipal D. Dinis, in Estremoz (22 May - 28 June). On the opening Andreia Vaz will give a short violin concert. This exhibition shows work from Ingrid Simons' residencies at OBRAS, with emphasis on her recent work of 2018 and 2019.
Ingrid began her career painting church interiors and urban landscapes, and later focused on nature. Her aim is to deconstruct the first impressions of a landscape, reconstructing a new reality which reveals its essence.
When she started her annual residencies in 2010 in the region of Alentejo, she adapted this approach. Although she was still seeking what a landscape awakens in her and what makes a landscape sublime, she increasingly felt that the raw nature of Alentejo became a part of her being. The landscape got under her skin. During this time, Ingrid Simons shifted from interpreting nature to experiencing nature: connecting with its pureness and power, and taking time to submerge.  As a result, she now paints more intuitively. Her landscapes have become more abstract in form and colour. Due to this freedom, she has found the richness in cloudy skies, in mirroring water, and in the colours of dusk.
Her fascination with human/nature relationships has manifested in work inspired by artificial lakes in abandoned marble quarries where nature reclaims the manmade space. This subject is shown in a number of paintings and ceramic works in this exhibition.

In Febrary-March Léon Biezeman (Holland) had a residency at OBRAS Holland. He was working on the finishing touch of his book Hein en het Makkelijk Lezen Plein (“Hein and the Easy Reading Square”). It is a book for 7-12 years-old children with dyslexia. Hein, the head character of the book meets other children who like him like books that are easily readable.

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.
In February 2020 she got an interview in a dance magazine in which she explained about this performance.

Maria Hansson (Sweden) had a highly productive residency in October (see 2019). Her central project was creating a performance in an abandoned marble quarry. She just published a beautiful video impression on Youtube.

Sabine Scholl (Austria) had her novel "O." published In September 2019 she was working on so hard on its finishing touch. The describes it as a female odyssey. From her reading we remember that it is a very impressive and highly original book.

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In September 2018 Dany Diaz (Honduras, currently living in San Salvador) was working on a book that has been published in January 2020: 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.

Since 2014 Luís Branco (Portugal) co-operates with Foundation OBRAS. He photographed the work of a number of artists in residence and had collaborative projects. This resulted in exhibitions, videos and a publication. We have created a page on this website to give an impression of the results.

And something completely different:
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 realization 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.