Newsletter  265
September 2024

OBRAS is now surrounded by a prairie and longing for the first autumn rains. We are harvesting grapes and pistachios while the residents are creating.

Residents at OBRAS Portugal in August were Mirjam Debets (film maker; Holland), Fran Liu (visual artist; Taiwan, UK), Gregorio Molina (visual artist; Spain), Aurélie Ferrière (composer; France, Sweden), Helen Butler (painter; UK, Portugal), Yonaki Ray (poet; India) and Monica de Miranda (visual artist; Portugal).
In September, residents are Elaine Nguen (USA), Aagje Linssen (Holland), Jeroen Vrijsen (Holland), Manuel Leromain (Belgium) and Aura Sevon (Finland), all visual artists or multimedia, Jane Flett (UK, Germany), Vika (USA) and Wilma Geldof (Holland), all writers, and Andrea Brasch (Denmark, Portugal; game designer). 
At OBRAS-holland, Paul Melis (writer) and Emma Stoneman (visual artist), both from Australia, have a two-months residency.

Some projects of residents in June are still in this newsletter, others are on the 2024 page.

As part of their residency at OBRAS in May (see elsewhere in this newletter), Sophie Tassignon and Ingrid Simons did a life performance at dusk on the edge of an oat field. Ingrid was painting with Indian ink a 5 meters long sheet, responding on Sophie singing “Molitva”, a song written by Bulat Okudzhava.
The intention was to give the video only show time on 1 September at noon! But the artists decided to keep it online for longer. Click on “Tassignon & Simons” to watch it.
If you want to receive the lead sheet for "Molitva" or a PDF with some of Ingrid’s artwork: leave a comment on this video, and the artists will send these to you.
By  subscribing to “Sophie´s newsletter” you will get a free mp3.

Jonaki Ray (India) was working on the finishing touch of longing and belonging, an essay about her family history which was deeply influenced by the war in Bengalen in the 1940th. Jonaki’s family was living in the part that now is Bangladesh. They lost all properties and had to escape to India, where they started a new life in Delhi and Mumbay. The deeper layer in the essay is about how people struggle finding a balance between commemorating historical roots, mourning about losses and building a new future. The essay is written in English, and will be translated into Portuguese.

Fran Lui (Taiwan) studied arts and architecture in Taipé and came two years ago to London for a pop-up study in bio design. Fran focuses on the relationship between man and nature, and more specifically on how spaces can be co-created and co-habited by human and other beings. At OBRAS she was contemplating, investigating and creating with cork. Fran made a site-specific work with cork strips floating as chandeliers between some cork oaks. It refers to mycorrhiza: the fungal network that connects roots of different trees and that is essential for tree health, especially in cork oak plantations. But it also refers to the notion that we are all interconnected. And it was a try out for an application for participating in “this town was a forest”, an art exhibition in London.
Fran also worked with ceramics. She made a figurine: a dancing couple, partly covered with cork. It was fired in the workshop of Inocencia (Evoramonte) and was names Cortiça (Portuguese for cork).  

On 31 May Marsja Mudde took us for a small walk while singing songs of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) and contemporaries.Marsja named the walk A Musical Pilgrimage. 
Program:
Nu lat uch lusten also hubsches meres
Marien-leich (Marian song) by Frauenlob (ca. 1300)
O pastor omnipotens
Antiphon from the mystical play Ordo Virtutum, by Hildegard von Bingen (ca. 1150)            
O dulcis electe
Responsory for St. John at Patmos, by Hildegard von Bingen (ca. 1140)    
Laudemus virgine
Maria-themed pilgrims’ song from northern Spain. Anonymous (early medieval).
Laude iocunda
Sequens for St. Peter (and about music and forgiveness). Anonymous from Limoges (ca. 1100)

On Saturday 25 May Sophie Tassignon gave a concert in the Big Hall of Foundation OBRAS.
Sophie is singer and composer with a background in jazz. She presented recently composed songs. Some were created during her artistic residency at Foundation OBRAS. One was recorded in an abandoned marble quarry.
The lyrics of one song is a poem by the Israeli poet Rachel Back (also an OBRAS resident) that Sophie put to music and did sing in Hebrew. The poem was written in 2001, inspired by Rachel Back’s compassion with the Palestinian people. Sophie did also sing a song in Arabic: a Palestinian folk song from the time of the British occupation (1920-1948) telling that the prison is not forever.

Mirjam Debets (Holland) is making and directing animation movies. Her first one: Diofonie, was about three people during the pandemic, finding comfort in this difficult time through music.
In Portugal she was working on her second one: a poetic movie about hands: about craftsmanship and identity, about body language and mindset. Mirjam was working on the scenario and storyboard, but also was eager to get input from her fellow residents.

Helen Butler (UK, living in Portugal) was drawing with oil paint pencils. Her daily routine started with a walk, during which she wrote down words that seemingly randomly popped up in her mind: gaze, buzz, curve, familiar, free .. In her studio she was mixing colours that she felt being related to those words. Other sources of inspiration were skies, clouds, and light interacting with vegetation. But essentially her paintings are about liberty, spirit, calm and (in her own words) an inner journey of longing, surrender and love.

Kedarnath Awati (India) is composer and arranger. At OBRAS transcribed a composition that he created for orchestra, to a piece for piano. And he was working on a new piece for orchestra that includes several elements of Indian music but will get a western classic sonata/symphony structure.
In addition, he established several contacts with fellow residents that may lead to future collaborations. On 10 June, Kedarnath gave a wonderful artist talk about his musical career and several of his compositions. His presentation flowed smoothly into a dinner, shared with our residents and Portuguese friends, during which cantes aletejanos, a fado, a blues and a Hindu folk song were sung. And as an intermezzo during dinner we practised already a bit for the upcoming solstice. Most of the photos are from Sebastião Resende.

Ingrid Simons (Holland) estimated her 2024-residency as the best of all 12 residencies in the past 12 years. She made a big step in abstraction in her painting. “Intriguing, powerful and astonishing” were some of the remarks she got. Ingrid also did some performances in nature, one of them in collaboration with Sophie Tassignon (see elsewhere in this newsletter).
She also made new ceramic work, together with the master potters of Redondo: Xico Tarefa and Fransisco Rosado. And she gave two guest lectures and was participating in examinations of master students of the visual arts & design departments of Evora University (resulting in similar invitation of next year). And last but not least: she sold serval of her works already during her residency.  

Lucie  Robert (Canada) was fascinated by everything she encountered around her: tiles, embroidery, shedding flower petals, dust of marble and clay, wind and light/shadow. She translated her impressions in abstract forms, resulting in beautiful and fascinating small installations. And being a university lecturer in “Reflecting on Arts”, she gave a highly informative artist talk.

Charlie Wührer (UK, living in Berlin) is an awarded writer of short stories, but at OBRAS she was working on her debut novel, Princess Court. In her own words: “It is about haunted spaces, guilt, queer and elderly love, care work, sex and friendship. What happens when a place foists its secrets onto strangers? When I wasn't writing, I was swimming, cooking things with clams and chorizo, and reading about haunted houses.”
Charley also gave a beautiful artist talk in which she told among others about living and working with two languages (she is part of a German family in the UK).
And she celebrated her birthday, for which a fellow resident, Sophie composed a song.
Charlie also exercised her skills in tarot cards reading.

Aurélie Ferrière (France, living in Sweden) is specialised in composing contemporary music. She came to finish a commission (facing a hard deadline): a piece for string octet. She worked super dedicated, a bit like a hermit, and she managed; two days before the end of her residency she submitted it to the commissioner. It will premiere on 9 December in Budapest and two days later in Berlin. While she was still cooling down from the stress, she received a new reason for celebration: she got a commission for writing an orchestral piece.
In another category she was fortunate as well: at the summer fest of Evoramonte she bought 10 tickets for 0,10€ each, and won three prices!  

Gregorio Molina (Spain) is visual artist. He is especially interested in the possibilities of relations between visual and verbal languages. He was drawing scenes, little elaborated and unfinished with the intention create an open narrative. In the same time, he was working on a novel on stalking and being stalked. He is considering to include the drawings in the novel, although all is still in a preliminary state.
And during a shared dinner Gregorio proofed to be a gifted singer.

OBRAS-Holland

In July, author and literary scholar Margreet den Buurman was working on a monograph about Barbara van Houten (1862- 1950), a painter who often spent the summer in a mansion 50 meters from the OBRAS residence. Although with no doubt she was a great landscape painter, she always lived in the shadow of her niece and famous painter of sea scapes: Hendrik Willem Mesdag, and of her father, an important politician and statesman: Samuel van Houten.
The essay has now been published on 'Accolade digitaal' of the MdNL. And the manuscript for a book has been accepted by the publisher. A beautiful result!
More info on Margreet and her project is on www.writersheart.nl 

Vincent Kortmann (Holland) was working in OBRAS-Holland. He gave the ultimate finishing touch of his new novel: Vlees en Bloed (´Flesh and blood´).
Vincent’s publisher: Atlas Contact, advised him to read the whole novel aloud.  He didn't want to put his family through that, and found OBRAS the perfect seclusion to do this job.
He also worked on it during a residency at OBRAS Portugal in 2023. It has been published on 28 August.
The story is surprising, funny and above all deeply moving.
After a relationship break-up, Viktor Nordmann returns to live with his father Leo. While Viktor tries to do everything right, everything threatens to slip away from him. Who is actually the father here and who is the son? What is a good man – and how do you become one?
When Viktor Nordmann's mother dies, his father Leo does two things: he starts making sausage and he arranges a Girlfriend Experience. But Viktor seems to lose everything: first his girlfriend Mischa and his hope for a child, and then his house. He moves in with his father, but there, he gets lost in a series of unfortunate decisions. Then Leo gets a stroke.

Also good to know:

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. We are thinking of a program covering the whole year of 2027. At this moment we are brainstorming with potential partners and all signs are very encouraging and promising.
The program will consist of a cluster of projects and may include exhibitions, site specific performances, excursions and symposia. A draft of the full proposal will soon be available on request. Our proposal will be ready for submission by the end of September 2024.

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Mónica de Miranda (Portugal) got the incredible honour to curate and participate in the Portuguese representation of the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Since 2010, Mónica had six residencies and produced several of her projects at OBRAS. In August of this year she had a short retreat to recover from Venice and to prepare her participation in the biennale of Dubai.
Greenhouse is a project grounded in interconnections of practice, theory, and pedagogy, presenting the exhibition space as a place of experimentation and reflection. The project includes collective actions through pedagogy, sound and movement that reflect on the relationship between nature, ecology and politics. 

Some more about OBRAS:

We decided that in specific cases emerging artists may be eligible for a discount on the weekly rate of 115€. 

We are contemplating on initiating art related activities that could contribute to stopping the crisis in Ukraine.

The annual report on the OBRAS activities in 2023 is now available on request.
More organisational info on OBRAS (goals, codes of Conduct, members of the board) is on this page.