This page shows residents and their projects in 2019.
The most recent residencies are shown in the newsletter.

Other pages show residents and their projects in 2018,  2017,  2016, 2015,  2014 ,  2012 and 2013  and 2004-2011. 
A visual collage of residents is in this slide show.

Jona Ray (India) wrote poems on historical or societal issues, sometimes charming, more often heavy, but always in the words of voice-less people: an over-worried father influencing family life even after his death, the fate of spouses of defeated heroes, holocaust victims pushed in trains to a concentration camp, ...  
During her artist talk Jona was reading out some of her poems with musical intervals with compositions of Tetsuya Hori, a fellow resident. All of us were moved.

On 6 June we had the opening of two exhibitions in the Gallery of INATEL in Évora (see newsletter).  This opening 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. 

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.     

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.

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.

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.

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. 

Diane O´Dwyer (Australia) returned for a residency at OBRAS-Holland. Her main focus was papermaking and printmaking. She explored what is happening to the land and environment due to both our daily life decisions as well as climate change. Diane continued her collaboration with Bert Hoekstra. He is a Renkum-based artist and specialist in papermaking. They together explored new surfaces to paint and print on. 

Sherry Wiggins (USA) returned to OBRAS-Portugal for a short but very productive residency. Together with the Portuguese photographer Luis Branco she did photo shoots in the fortress of Evoramonte, in the nature directly around our house and Pego do Sino, a hidden canyon on a 30 minutes’ walk from the house. An impression is in the slide show on this page and much more about the results and vision is on the blog of Sherry. We have started preparing a duo exhibition for Sherry and Luís in the prestigious Salão Nobre in the Palácio Barrocal in Évora in spring next year.
The work of Sherry and Luís of 2017 has been exhibited earlier this year in Denver, Colorado. Sherry and Luís have a long term project:  a contemplation on human/nature relations, dedicated to nature embracing a middle aged woman.Although Sherry is the model and Luís the photographer, it became an intense exchange of creative ideas.

In OBRAS-Holland Derek Cracco (USA) made some abstract works that remind to planetary systems or eyeballs. And he started a body of work related to America’s obsession with guns and how the media has glorified and promoted this obsession. By drawing, painting and reworking found images he created devotional prayer cards for the holy cult of the Second Amendment. Both heroes (Rambo, Bruce Willis, ..) and martyrs (victims of mass shootings) are figuring. He studied the iconography of 14 to 17 century Flemish paintings in the Dutch museums to suggest the cult of the gun to be a religion.

The French sound-artist Frederique Mathevet amazed all of us with his artist talk. A major part of his project was basically making sound compositions of images from objects in the surroundings. He outlined the piano keys on a transparent sheet and moved this sheet over the objects. The overlap of a piano key on the sheet with a line of dot in the object resulted in the base for scores for a piano composition. It was a highly original and fascinating example of cross-art. Have a look at the slide show.

Anna Ortiz (USA) has a Mexican father. Step-wise she is more and more using her Mexican roots as a source of inspiration for her paintings. During her residency she completely focused on it, resulting in a fascinating series of drawings and paintings with hints to Mexican mythology or with surrealistic scenes with a Mexican touch. One painting shows Flor, our one-eyed cat, as an Aztec God. 
Anna showed her recent "Portuguese" works
in an exhibition: Ruin, in the Royal Society of American Art, Brooklyn, USA (July-August 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 slideshow 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).   

Game designer Andrea Brasch (Denmark, currently living in Berlin) came to do the finishing touch of a project that took seven years. She created a computer game that playfully guides the gamer through issues related to longing, relationships and even the meaning of life. The game is about a small disk that misses a small segment. The disk runs through the landscape looking for the missing part. It encounters other objects, sometimes not easy to come in contact with, and has nice conversations. But the disk fails finding the missing part and perfect match. It is considering whether to be perfect is to be desired.    

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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.

Skye Jamieson (Australia) made small minimalist abstract paintings, for which she did endless tests with paper, cardboard, paints, pigments, brush strokes, textures and colours. They seem sensitive studies on less is more: no obvious composition, no trigger for a mood or emotion and no clue on the intention of the artist. And all this makes them intriguing. To her own surprise Skye had a hard time to cope with the energies that she felt coming from the rocks and trees around her room.

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.Les étapes à suivre pour une réorientation professionnelle réussie , aims to help making big career changes (like herself: from banker to writer). It analyses frustrations on the desire to feel more useful but also the wish to smile at work without wanting a "useful" job, enjoy without guilt. And on a deeper level it tells about the role of individuality. On 12 September it was launched and is now for sale.

Sabine Scholl (Austria, living in Germany) did work on a historical novel, partly an essay, on Jews living in exile. She tells the story of some artists who in WW II escaped Europe (often via Portugal) in an attempt to create a new artistic career in New York. She tells about their mixed feelings: relieve to have survived the holocaust and frustrations to be a no-body in their new country.

 Cody Healey-Conelly (USA) was working nearly day and night on a combination of a sculpture and a video animation. With foam sheets he created a hub of milk shake cups, Mac Donald packs, a gun and a car. On its surfaces he projected a 3-minutes video collage of issues in recent American history, including human rights, climate change and alternative facts. It was unique in its formal approach and moving in its content. And it was more than beautiful.

Carolyn Wenning (USA) made a beautiful series of black-and-white drawings, mostly with charcoal and liquid wax. Although largely abstract, the source of inspiration was the surrounding pasture and the marble quarries. In addition she made collages with fragments of old books that she found on the farmers market. The slide show gives an impression.
Carolyn also initiated a highly successful cross-art experiment: she proposed Beate Schnaithmann to improvise on her cello while the other residents were responding by drawing. This video shows the action.  

Jane Flett (Scotland, living in Berlin) worked on a novel, partly built up of hundred-words fables. The novel is basically an epic longform poem about a girl who gets lost in the wilderness. It is inspired by Scottish myths but also on people who are lost during nature trials. The story explores the point that a desire to get away turns into a terror once it actually happens. It tells about disintegration of perception and loss of sense of self that occurs when you no longer have the grounding of knowing where you are.
In addition she made short poems. One is a highly original vision on vultures: see the video. 
From the first day onward Jane decided to demand to herself an iron rhythm this is the opposite of her Berlin life:  alternating yoga, eating, writing, swimming, eating, writing, relaxing, eating writing and sleeping. And it payed of: she was productive like rarely before. 

The Dutch poet and resident in 2017: Job Degenaar got three of his Portuguese poems published in the prestigious literary magazine Extaze, in a thematic edition on dairies (Extaze 30-8 nr2). Nine more will be published in April 2020.

The cellist Beate Schnaithmann (Germany, living in Switzerland) had an intense residency. She was studying many hours per day, but also started a series of collaborative projects. Most of them are mentioned elsewhere in this newsletter. With Rob Monaghan she went at night to the marble quarries to make video and sound recordings with just the sound of the cello, moonlight and croaking frogs. Later at daylight she played Benjamin Britten at a lake in a marble quarry. Initiated by Carolyn Wenning she did a cross art project in which visual artists responded on her improvisations. And with Ingrid Simons she responded with cello sounds on Ingrid´s video of a seascape. Most remarkable is that she started a trio with Mauro Dilemma (piano) and Andreia Vaz (violin). They almost certainly will have concerts in the near future in Portugal and Switzerland. But above all the residency brought her new viewpoints and inspiration for her musical career.

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.

Tetsuya Hori (Japan, currently living in Germany) was working on a piece for cello, accompanied by the sound of stones scratching on a slab of marble. The piece will be brought to stage in Mexico-city: the cellist is playing while the sound of marble will be heard via a surround sound system with eleven sound boxes.  
Together with Ralf Jaroschinski (Germany) who came over for some days, he worked on an arrangement of The Firebird of Igor Stravinsky to be executed in Munich in February 2020.

In his paintings Paul Gagner (USA) used elements of his surroundings to create surrealistic scenes that trigger conflicting moods at the viewer: attraction and defense, joy and fear. He painted for instance the moon shining through the spiny cactus foliage. Another work showed his feet cooling down in the swimming pool while wasps floated on the water surface.
At his artist talk he also showed earlier projects. The marble project of last year of course (see residents 2018) and a project on Dr Howard Moseley M.D., a fictional writer of self-help books who seems specialized in what it means to be an artist. Paul painted covers of his books with titles such as “Guide to hypnotizing curators”, “Don´t fuck it up if success is arbitrarily handed to you”, “when art attacks and how to defend yourself” and “Do it yourself gravestones; preparations for your final performance”.

Maureen Drennan (USA) made photos, using her analogue camera for 6x7 cm roll films, of fellow residents and workers of Alentejo. And she started a new project: she photographed elements in nature with an obvious or suggestive reference to sexuality.
During her artist talk Maureen presented the impressive results of a long-term project: she portrayed a professional cannabis grower in the North of California in the last ten years of his life: how he coped with a societal position between legal and illegal, between being accepted and an outcast, and how he lived with his progressing lethal disease.

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.

Kathy MacLeod (Thailand) is a cartoonist by profession. Every day she worked on her dairy in cartoon style: generally very funny, original and to the point. But her main project was working on a book of about 150 pages, an autobiographical graphic novel, but also a critical essay on the life of her generation and on societal values in general. On the surface it tells about misadventures in online dating. Under the surface, however, it’s an exploration of the impossibility of achieving intimacy when pursuing it as a way to escape your demons. It is a story about watching in horror to see the void in personal life keeps getting bigger — and the slow, painful, but ultimately redeeming march towards self-acceptance. The story is funny, sometimes deeply sad and always very moving.

Also good to know:

In May we had two house concerts with a resident: Beate Schnaithmann (cello), and two friends and professional musicians from Évora: Mauro Dilema (piano) and Andreia Vaz (violin). In the first concert they played Piazzolla and Rachmaninoff and in the second Piazolla and Schubert. They are now considering to start a trio for concerts in Switzerland and Portugal.

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. 

“Sense of Place” was the title of an exhibition in July, August of the Portuguese works of Kevin Tolman (Nuart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA). Kevin had several residencies in OBRAS Portugal. He made abstract collages in which he combined painted marks with found pages from journals and pamphlets. This layering refers to layering of the many cultures layered in the Portuguese landscape.

Cody Healey-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 in 2015. He returned to OBRAS-Holland in 2018 and had residencies in OBRAS-Portugal in 2017 and 2019.

Rachel Tzvia Back (Israel) was resident in 2013 and 2015. Her newest album: What Use Is Poetry, The Poet Is Asking. has been published in May 2019 (Shearsman Books (Newcastle u.T., UK). ISBN 978-1-84867-640-090000). Several poems relate to observations during her residency. Even one of our two cats had the honor to be subject.

CAT (2)
 
As though all that could ever
be desired
                were in its boughs - She
unfaltering
climbs.
 
Her smoke-grey self
is steady as she rises
                Deep into the Sky
 
and still
the Surprise –
 
When there on the
swaying steeple branch
                as though herself
 
a Bird –
she lies down
 
and sleeps.