Newsletter  172
August 2019

It is very dry now. We harvested our summer crops: fig, peach and grapes.
On 12 August we closed the exhibitions of Rob Monaghan and Katharina Fröschl-Roßboth. And on 14 August our first resident of the second part of 2019 arrived.
This newsletter tells about the artists and their project in June and mentions the ones coming in August (OBRAS was closed in July).

The opening of the exhibitions on 6 June was highlighted by an impressive performance by Phyllis Akinyi (dance) and Stephan Jarl (percussion).
Phyllis started her performance by walking through the two exhibitions and continued on a stage together with Stefan Jarl in the patio of the Palacio Barocal (Evora). The performance deals with identity, cultural roots and tradition, but also refers to the liberation of the feminine. 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. 

For Rob Monaghan (Ireland) organised an exhibition Architecture of Void in the INATEL Gallery in Évora (6 June- 11 August). A slideshow with highlights is below.
In 2017 and 2018 Rob explored the abandoned marble quarries with photography, video, collecting “found objects” and by swimming in some of the quarry lakes.
Although several more works are exhibited, with no doubt the central piece is a video showing a performance by Phyllis Akinyi, 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 has 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 has an exhibition with photos and some small installations. During several residencies in different countries Katharina made seven photo portraits of 31-years old women. She focused on their daily life and on the feeling of many women that an age of round 31 is a turning point. One of the portraits is of Mara, an Évora based fado singer. A slideshow with highlights of this exhibition is below.

After the opening of her exhibition Katharina started  a new subject for her residency. She was doing research on the role of the father in upbringing a child. She contemplated on his role in society and in the family, which often is made invisible. The first photos on this issue were very intriguing.

Geoffrey Stone (USA) was working on his second novel that tells the history of a family in the nineteenth century that tried to emigrate from Portugal to the USA, but was not accepted and ended up in São Paulo, Brazil. The story also traces back family traditions and the origin of the family name. But it may also tell about people whose dream does not come true but nevertheless does not get frustrated but enjoy the second best. 

Ingrid Simons, painter from Holland, came back for her tenth residency! This time it was for two months and it became may be the most productive residency until now. The slideshow gives an impression. Ingrid paints half-abstract landscapes and she is increasingly successful and renown. In most recent years she is making a big shift: from interpreting the landscape she is experiencing the landscape. José Rodrigues dos Santos, a Portuguese friend is writing an essay on Ingrid’s work, and on contemporary landscape painting in general. During the Open Studio on 26 June he told about his vision and all were impressed. Ingrid is invited by the Estremoz Museum to have an exhibition in spring 2020 in the beautiful Dom Dinis Gallery.     

Bel Falleiros (Brazil, living in the USA) was working on a long-term project on the phenomenon of monuments in public space. She was focussing on Pelourinhos. These are columns, often made of marble, and most of the time placed on a public square. It was the location where justice was spoken and where punishments were executed. The Portuguese brought this custom to Brazil, where it stepwise became the symbol of oppression of the native Indians and especially the slaves by the colonisers. That is why in Brazil they virtually all have been destroyed in the post-colonial time. In Portugal they do not have this connotation and are valued as a historical object, causing odd feelings by Brazilian visitors.
Bel did several side-project using local marble and clay.  Among others she made an installation that referred to the megalithic monuments in the region.

Maude Deslauriers (Canada) was doing a residency in the scope of her Masters degree in Fine Arts.
Maude´s work acts as a reinterpretation of botany. She observed that in traditional taxonomy illustrations often show similarities with human organs and especially female genitals. Maude is bringing this in the scope of feminism. She used mediums of traditional botanical illustration such as watercolour and gouache to create half abstract images with suggestions towards nature and the human body.

Simon Frisch (USA) was working on a music composition entitled J'AY LE CORPS DÉLIÉ. It is a song-cycle-as-fable that revisits the Duchess Anne de Bretagne's legendary forty-day funeral (1514). Her forced marriage to the French crown in 1491 marked the end of Breton independence and the beginning of a power struggle that still lives in the current Breton consciousness. Drawing on original texts and from her court and from contemporary Breton writers, Simon´s song cycle frames earthly and spiritual dimensions of Anne's transformation and questions how the physical body transcends to symbol. Simon´s compositions are contemporary but clearly refer to medieval and renaissance polyphonic singing.
With the support of Steven Fox and the Clarion Orchestra and Choir, Simon got the opportunity to realize this story for presentation at the Cloisters in Manhattan.

Chloé Schemoul (France) recently became full-time writer. She works on a novel, vaguely auto-biographic, about a young girl that stepwise, story to story, chapter to chapter, grows up and becomes an adult and an artist, even before she realizes it herself. She experiments friendship, religion, society, work and death. Each story is written in a language that refers to the age of the girl. Another book of Chloé is about professional reconversion: an essay on people who decided to make a big change in their life. Special attention is given to women who become an artist.

Zia Soares is artistic director of Griot, a theatre company in Lisbon. She came with Monica Miranda and Nuno Santos to prepare a film project that is scheduled for September 2020 at OBRAS. Undying Bodies is the title of the movie with around six actors that will be shoot in and around our centre.
Zia is the producer, Monica does the scenography and Nuno the sounds. All actors and staff members are people of colour. Undying Bodies is about how most African cultures experience the decease of some-one. While in Western culture it is mostly a matter of black and white, most African cultures assume it to be a gradual process with interactions between physical, spiritual and societal forces. During the residency in September 2020 the group will grant us an open rehearsal. More info will follow.

András Kecskes (Hungary) had a productive residency in OBRAS-Holland. He painted some twenty mysterious landscapes and some abstract works, all with vague contours in saturated colours.  In 2017 András was in OBRAS-Portugal where he painted on sheets of marble. These works are at this moment being exhibited in Budapest.

More residencies in June and earlier are mentioned on the page residents 2019.

During her residency at OBRAS-Holland in April Sherry Wiggins started a new project that is currently in a crucial phase of progress. While for the three previous residences in Portugal the work of Helena Almeida (1934-2018) was a source of inspiration, this time it is the French surrealist artist Claude Cahun (1894-1954). Cahun´s work often undermined traditional concepts of static gender roles.
In intense collaboration with the Portuguese photographer Luís Branco, Sherry made a series of photos in and around the house of OBRAS-Holland. The photos 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 fact and fantasies, of existential wishes and deep fears. The slidesow below gives an impression.
This project will result in a book, for which Sherry gets the help of Cydney Payton (curator and writer) and Joseph Logan (book designer).   

also nice to know:

 
On 21 June we celebrated Solstice, with a picnic dinner that was loosely inspired by the Stone Age (starting with the famous Portuguese stone soup). At sunset we went to our solstice stone: a natural rock formation on top of a hill 50 m from the main house, which (by co-incidence?) exactly indicates the place on the horizon where on this day the sun sets. 

Ingrid Simons left OBRAS Portugal on 30 June with her car full of still wet oil paintings that she made during her 2-months residency. Back home some of them were directly shipped to Italy to be shown in the Biennale Le Latitudini dell'arte (Palazzo Ducale, Genova, until 31 August; 2019). Ingrid Simons has residencies annually. She paints half-abstract landscapes. In recent years she adapted her way of looking at the landscape (from interpreting towards experiencing), she is working more abstract and uses more colours. 

"Shadow play" is a short video made by Rob Monaghan. He recorded Beate Schnaithmann playing the cello at night in a marble quarry. Rob and Beate were residents in May 2019.
The video was selected for screening in Ireland (Damer House Gallery, Tipperary, August; Institute Cervantes, Dublin, 21 November) and in Spain (Loop Festival, Barcelona; 11-21 November). 

Our residents in August will be Jona Ray (writer; India), Andrea Brasch (Denmark, living in Germany; animation movies), Vincent Kortmann (writer, Holland), Diane O´Dwyer (multimedia; Australia), E.R.Murray (writer; UK), Skye Jamieson (visual artist; Australia), Rebecca O´Brien (visual artist; Australia), Paul Gagner (painter; USA), Maureen Drennan (Photography; USA) and Ietsuya Hori (musician, composer; Japan, living in Germany).