This page shows residents and their projects in 2020.
most recent residents and their projects are in the newsletter.
Other pages show residents and their projects in 2019, 2018,  2017,  2016, 2015,  2014,  2012 and 2013  and 2004-2011. 
A visual collage of residents is in this slide show.

The lock down caused a strange start of our residency season. We were closed for three months, cancelled two exhibitions and rescheduled quite some residencies. This page tells about the residencies that took place and about activities in 2020 that were the result of earlier residencies. 

The Mirror Between Us is an exhibition that was cancelled due to the corona pandemic. We made a video to show part of the exhibition and the works of its two artists, Sherry Wiggins (USA) and Luís Branco (Portugal). Above is the English version. We also made a Portuguese version of the video.
 
The Mirror Between Us is about the archetype of a middle-aged woman in a mythical landscape. It is a project about aging, the human-nature relationship and beauty.
The exhibition is rescheduled for the spring of 2022, in the same venue: Igreja de S. Vicente, Évora Portugal.
We created a special page on this website, with more background information on this exhibition and the artists.

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.

Also Ressonânçias da Terra, an exhibition of Ingrid Simons, had to be postponed, probably to spring 2021. A pity, also because it was intended to be part of celebrating her tenth residency at OBRAS-Portugal.
In 2010 Ingrid Simons (Holland) had her first residency OBRAS. She fell in love with Alentejo at first sight. This grew into a strong and lasting love.
Looking back it is clear that she adapted her style and vision on landscape painting in these 10 years. First she was interpreting what see saw and was seeking what a landscape awakens in her.  Over the years she increasingly felt that the raw nature of Alentejo became a part of her being. She shifted from interpreting nature to experiencing nature. As a result, she now paints more intuitively. Her landscapes have become more abstract and more atmospheric. We made a special page for Ingrid on this website with impressions of her works and exhibitions of the past 10 years.

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.

Clarisse Baleja Saidi was working on the finishing touch of her novel that tells about the dramatic life of an West-African woman surmounting her fears and traumas, experiences partly due to the realities around her and partly due to her troubled mind. Baleja spent most of her artist talk on reading parts of this novel, which caused an in-depth discussion on coping with trauma.

Baleja also worked on a collection of lyrical essays. She writes into the multiple consciousness of African women in the Americas, and explores racism, patriotism, body language and beauty ideals. In this trans-cultural context she also contemplates on the blurred line between mental illness and spiritual awakenings.  

Baleja was born in Ivory Coast to a Rwandan-Ugandan mother and Congolese father, and had her university education in Canada and the United States. She is considering moving to Portugal.

In February-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.

On 21 June we celebrated solstice in combination with an open studio of Helen Butler. On 50 meters from our house a flat, upright rock indicates (by co-incidence?) the place on the horizon where the sun sets on 21 June. An extra reason to enjoy the sunset on that day. More on Helen and her work is elsewhere on this page.

Helen Butler had a residency in May-June and came back for a residency in August-October. Her paintings are fascinating: mysterious harmony and yet vivid, nearly monochromatic and yet a richness in tints, fragile and yet powerful. Helen continued making her intriguing paintings, adapting her color spectrum in response to surrounding nature and skies. And she started experimenting with transparencies.
She had artist talks with studio visit on 20 June, 25 August and 26 September. The slideshow above and the video below gives impressions of her work in progress.

Sherry Wiggins and Luis Branco participated in a group exhibition: Pink Progression Collaborations, in the Avara Center in Denver (USA). They present “My Claude My Medusa”, a diptych of two portrait photos, one showing Claude Cahun (1894 – 1954) and one Sherry. The two faces show a similar gaze and hair arrangement (wreath like Medusa). The photos are accompanied by a poem by Sherry. The exhibition will last until 8 November. 
My Claude My Medusa is part “The Unknown Heroin”, a project that Sherry and Luís were working on during their 2019 residency at OBRAS Holland. It will result in a book and an exhibition, provisionally scheduled for 2021.

In march 2020 Sabine Scholl (Austria) published “O”: a novel based on the Odyssey of Homerus, but approached from a female perspective, and brought into the now. The heroin crosses the oceans accompanied by a women’s choir and encounters people who believe in an apocalypse due to migration, while the heroin herself sees something new and promising.  Sabine did the finishing touch of this novel during her residency in October 2019.

During her residency in 2019 Jona Ray (India) wrote poems on historical or societal issues. After her return to India she wrote a nice essay on her residency in an Indian newspaper.

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.
Pedro Ferro (Portugal) made some amazing photos that Maria is considering to exhibit later this year. 

Aurélie Ferrière had residencies in 2017 and 2019. During her ocean tour in 2018 Aurélie collected sounds of birds, seaweed, waves and insects. She composed a music piece with it and combined it with a blue laser show that suggests gently moving waves. In 2020 she is giving life concerts in Europe and the USA. More information is on musicomexp.

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. 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.

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. Beate had three residencies in the past years and met Mauro and Andreia, two professional musicians, living in Évora. 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.

 

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Karen Bernard (USA) is a dancer and performance artist. In October 2019 she created and executed a beautiful performance about trauma due to a murder. In February 2020 she got an interview in a dance magazine in which she explained about this performance.

Nazaré Soares (Spain) was working on I am Half Sick of Shadows: an audio-visual composition based on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Bells.  She defines her work as a “Cinematic Ceremony”: abstract in image, sounds and narratives, but with lots of associations for those who are open for them.
A young woman walks quietly through a constantly vibrating cave, on music related to the seven tantric chakras. The cave can be seen as womb, a shelter and a space where one feels the feminine energy of origins. The walk is an immersion of body and senses, and may symbolize processes of mourning, searching for vital cycles and a navigation to an unknown future. It bears a transformation, but towards where?, towards what?
Nazaré was deeply inspired by Pego do Sino, also known as the Canyon of the Bells. It is a biodiversity hotspot, but also a place full of history and legends. Nazaré is looking for ways to include it in her Cinematic Ceremony.

From 7 until 13 September Teatro Griot, a theatre group from Lisbon had rehearsals for O riso dos necrófagos (see below for the participants).
The play tells about the Batepá massacre in 1953 in São Tomé, a former Portuguese Island in the Atlantic Ocean. Hundreds of forros (native creoles) were massacred by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners. The forros were mostly cacao farmers and refused to work as contract laborers on the building projects of the Portuguese governor. Initially these projects were meant to improve living conditions and local economy, but turned into megalomaniac buildings.
The governor considered this unrest to be a communistic conspiracy and mobilised the army and workers from Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde to stop the protests. This quickly turned into a bloodbath: hundreds of forros were killed, tens were burned alive or tortured to death. Most bodies were dumped in the sea. 
The governor was forced to return to Lisbon where he was praised and got a promotion. Seven forros were convicted for killing two police men. An official investigation proved that there was no communist conspiracy.
The premiere will be on 12 February in Culturgest, Lisbon. In 2021 it will tour through Portugal and abroad.
Participants are: Directing, text, staging and acting: Zia Soares. Actors: Benvindo Fonseca, Vera Cruz, Marcus Veiga, Binete Undonque, Daniel Martinho and Gio Lourenço. Music: Mick Trovoada. Composition, sound design and acting: Nuno Solares. Scenery and costumes: Neusa Trovoada. Choreography: Lucília Raimundo. Video and photography: António Castelo and Sofia Berberan.
The project is co-produced by Griot and Culturgest.

Elly Heisse (Canada) came to prepare an installation for her next exhibition. She made photos and drawings and designed a set up. Elly tries to visualize blurring borders between the human body and nature. She made, for instance, small drawings of creatures that are partly tree and partly human limps. Another fascination is to play with dimensions and sizes. She combined landscape photos with the blood veins network of the retina of her own eyes.  And she was deeply impressed by the inhuman dimensions of abandoned marble quarries.

Mia Bailey (Australia, currently living in Germany) came to work on her second artist book and began a third one. For the last few years, she has been investigating ways to combine her long-term practice as a professional visual artist with her writing, moving away from video work to a combination of image and text. An overall theme in her art is the experience of looking and seeing: what of the world that surrounds us do we know? To what extent are we trapped in our culture and conventions?
At OBRAS, she completed her second artists' book, based on images from dreams that she had during the time of the residency. Working with simple materials (paper, foam board and found objects) and taking photos with a mobile phone, she produced images that evoked the colour, texture, and symbolic patterning of dreams, rather than being directly illustrative. In her artists' talk, she spoke about experimenting with different ways of integrating narrative and fiction in her new body of work.

Florian Leitner (Germany) used his residency for an evaluation of five years directing Medientheater (Humboldt University Berlin). He worked on a book that focuses on The Scene as a structure that defines time/space in which human and artificial bodies are acting (in theater, film and performances, but also in video surveillance and artificial face recognition).
In his artist talk Florian presented two examples. It resulted in a discussion that continued until long after the end of his presentation.  The first was a video in which a performer read out a short text that was recorded by a sound system and sent out with a few seconds delay. The performer read the sentence again adding it to the machine voice, this combination was recorded and resent while the performer added the sentence again and so on, until a monotonous noise remained. The video triggered contemplating on blurring the difference between reality and truth.
The second video was a plain registration of a “zoom” meeting in which students were video-recorded in their home, doing nothing. It triggered thoughts about time, space and isolation.

Rebecca Rukeyser (USA, currently working in Berlin) came to finish one novel and to start another. The first needed a finishing touch, but was already bought by a publishing house. It is about a family that came to start a new life in tourism in Alaska, but it stepwise turned into a tragedy. It is humoristic and sad in the same time. The story refers to the heroism in classical Westerns, but destructs the myths in it. It also breaks with this genre by having a young woman as protagonist. A central theme is “isolation” and this became also an in-depth discussion during Rebecca’s artist talk.  She had a small but dedicated audience and proved to be not only a good writer but also a gifted reader.
In the other novel, the one that Rebecca just started to write, Flor (our disabled cat) may well be featuring.  

Vintani Nafassi (Mozambique, currently living in South Africa) is an emerging singer-songwriter. 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 discovered a new skill: making music instruments from all kinds of second hand materials. On 19 February he presented his creations in an intimate concert.His audience was exited: see this video:

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).

In July Yvonne Halfens, Nico Huijbreghts and (in the second half) Peter Bremer were our house carers in Portugal. They experienced the hottest July ever in our region, but the swimming pool and most of the time the house and the clear nights brought coolness. And they found the biorhythm to make art.
Yvonne experimented with thin branches of the oaks that we pruned this spring. She made a series of beautiful, small installations in several styles: geometrical, calligraphy alike or surrealistic. It invites the viewer to make his own story.
Peter made small, abstract drawings vaguely suggesting plants and birds. He experimented with the paints that he found in our art materials storage (basically largely leftovers from previous residents). He got excited by one colour that was new to him: Greek Foliage Green.
Nico experimented with texts carved in clay: short sentences that are not aimed to express something crucial, but nevertheless can deeply hurt the receiver (mostly an artist). The slide show has a example. The text is in Dutch. It says:  Yesterday she said: mmmm ... (such a low short mmm that bends to the lowest possible tone). What, what do you mean? I asked. mmm? What do you mean? I don't know, she said. I do not know. Uh ... and ... and now? What should I do now? What ..     
Nico also composed a song: a requiem for a cherry orchard. He himself did sing it on 23 August at the finissage of an exhibition in “De Nieuwe Gang” in Beuningen (Holland).

Claudia Tomaz (Portugal; living in the UK) took two residencies OBRAS in the past years. She just finished The Soul Journey, a long term project that resulted in a movie and a book. It is a kind of poetic autobiography and spiritual essay. Largely based on her own experiences, sometimes traumatic, sometimes beautiful, Claudia explored themes such as uncertainty, impermanence, energy, healing and living in harmony with nature. Claudia gave us a private preview. More info is on www.claudiatomaz.com. We watched it with twelve friends and nearly all were impressed.  

Andrea Brasch and her team were awarded for their video game Journey of the Imperfect Circle. She just heard that they won the 2nd place in the prestigious The Labels Indie competition. “Indie” refers to video games created by small teams without support of a large game publisher. Because of their independence, indie games focus on innovation and on art games.
Andrea is a regular guest at OBRAS-Portugal. In 2018 she got an exhibition (see residents 2018) and in 2019 she was working on the finishing touch of The Imperfect Circle. The video game that playfully guides the gamer through issues related to longing, relationships and even the meaning of life. The game is about a creature in the form of a circle that misses a small segment. The disk runs through the landscape looking for its missing part. It encounters other objects, sometimes not easy to come in contact with and has conversations, sometimes social, often in-depth. But the circle fails finding its missing part and perfect match. It starts considering whether to be perfect is to be desired.

“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 makes abstract collages in which he combines painted marks with found pages from journals and pamphlets. This layering refers to layering of the many cultures layered in the Portuguese landscape.
Kevin was scheduled to have an exhibition in Vimiero, Portugal in November 2020, but had to be postponed due to Corona. More info will follow.

Veridiana Leite (Brazil, currently living in Lisbon) is a landscape painter. But her landscapes are abstract in composition and color. They are collages of impressions: objects sometimes floating through a hallucinating sky, sometimes quietly resting in a dreamy atmosphere.  Veridiana was very productive, but also took time to experiment with small drawings, transparent plastic sheets and an xx-size canvas.
In the last week of November she had exhibition entitled Habitat, in Zaratan, Lisbon. She showed work that she made during her residency. 

Monica de Miranda (Portugal) had residencies at OBRAS for almost 10 years. This year she visited us in June and for a short period in August. Her art work generally takes the form of videos incorporated in installations. Her current two focal points in her residency are violence against women and the impact that slavery still has nowadays. In her June residency she was considering whether she could use the destruction of the landscape by marble quarrying as a metaphor for violence against women. And in her August residency she did research on the history of slavery in the Alentejo in the 16th-19th century.  Her artist talk was informal but impressive and made us very curious to next steps.

Fien Veldman (Holland) was working on her first novel (she was already awarded multiple times for essays and short stories).
The novel tells about a young woman with a low-level job in an office. Her task is to print out letters, put them in envelopes, and send them. She’s alienated from society, has a difficult personality, lacks friends and suffers from a rare allergy. Because of this, she developed the habit of talking to her printer. At first, her colleagues think she’s making a lot of phone calls. Later on, her boss discovers the truth and diagnosed a burn-out. She felt badly understood as she was so proud of herself to have discovered the sender of a mysterious package that was wrongly sent to her.
A deeper layer in the story is a contemplation on our inner and outer world and how they are intertwined. It is a tragic, absurdist story, but told with humour.
Fien also proved to be gifted singer. She granted us a short, intimate open-air concert next to her house.   

Osamu Giovanni Micico (Japan, currently living in Florence) came to experience landscape painting en plein air. He enjoyed it even although it was challenging due to wind, insects and variable light. It resulted in a series of oil paintings and charcoal sketches, of which he presented a selection at his artist talk (see slide show).
However, the highlight of his residency was Osamu`s discovery that in 1584 for Japanese student-priests have visited the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa, 30 kms from our residency. Osamu decided that this will become the subject of a new series of paintings in which he intends to combine historical and contemporary aspects of intercultural contacts. The Bragança Foundation, owner of the Ducal Palace intends to support this project. Also the Municipality of Év0ra showed interest in being involved. An exhibition is considered that will show paintings by Osamu in combination with historical artifacts. The intention is to make it a traveling exhibition starting in Portugal in 2023 and continuing in 2024 in Italy and Japan.  More info will follow.  

At OBRAS Holland, Zofia Tomczyk (Poland) was working on an ongoing project called “Micro Practices”. The idea is collecting small tasks to address the connection to oneself, to others and the environment: practising care, generosity, radical softness and empathy. A score is both an action that anybody can do without an audience and at the same time, holds the potential to become an art piece.
During her residency Zofia was editing past Micro Practices and created new ones inspired by her residency. She also worked on a website and a book on her project that she intends to publish in 2021 or 2022.
Zofia assumes times of uncertainty to be precious chances of a possible change. As a dancer and a dreamer, she choose to collect and share practices to navigate through the unknown as a way of coming to oneself, to each other, to nature. While being in isolation due to the pandemic the Micro Practices became a way to stay connected.
The act of sharing is central in Zofia´s project. It is a very enriching process, like giving to one’s individual experiences a new life. Setting something out to the world, somebody else is able to pick it up and take it further, creating a beautiful chain of connections. It’s a precious gift.

Margreet den Buurman (Holland) came to OBRAS-Holland with two goals: as a Thomas Mann specialist, she was completing her new title: Women around Thomas Mann, or The eternal Tristan.
Her second goal was starting a book on her great-uncles Willem and Pieter de Zwart. Both were painters working in impressionist style. For their en plein air landscape painting they moved in the beginning of the 20th century to the Veluwe. They participated in a painters colony that had a meeting point in Vila Ana, some 100 meters from the OBRAS residency.
Like her great-uncles some 100 years ago, Margreet got impressed and inspired by the local landscape. It was a great help for her writing that the experienced herself what may have moved her great-uncles. 
The slideshow has some historical photos of the painters and gives an impression of the landscape.

António Tavares is a painter, living near to OBRAS-Portugal. We made a special page on his work in relation to OBRAS.  
Occasionally, António works in one of our studios. He is a frequent and highly appreciated visitor of our artist talks and open studios and has become a dear friend. In 2013, 2017 and 2019 he had short work periods at OBRAS-Portugal and in 2018 in OBRAS-Holland. 

During her residency in 2014, Norlynne Coar (USA) started a long term project. During her international journeys she made paintings that show her fascination for trees. Norlynne published a beautiful compilation if this project and published it: watch this video.

Scott Wixon (USA) had residencies in 2018 and 2019. He presented his “Portuguese works” in 2019 online (www.phoenix-gallery.com) and in January 2020 in Dacia Gallery, New York.

Miguel Noya (Venezuela) was the creator, together with Paul Goodwin, of I am the size of what I see,  a musical theater on WWI and inspired by Fernando Pessoa. It was performed in Évora in 2018. Last year Miguel had to escape his home country because of its economic collapse and found work as composer and performer in the UK and Spain. But now he is “locked up” in Madrid because of the Corona pandemic. Impressive that he is still creating. Here is a link to his recent music including background info.

In 2019 Katharina Fröschl-Roßboth had an exhibition with photos and some small installations on seven 31-years old women, telling about heir daily life and on their feeling that an age of round 31 is a turning point. In January 2020 the exhibition was also presented in Austria (Schaustelle. Margaretenstraße 106, Vienna). 

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.

In January 2020, the Dutch Job Degenaar published a cycle of 12 poems, entitled Het Vliegend Konijn (“he flying rabbit”) in the prestigious poetry magazine Extaz. All poems are based on the experiences and observations of his residency in 2018.

In July Estremoz, the charming little town 10 km from OBRAS, got a big, prestigious and very beautiful new museum dedicated to 800 years history of tiles. 

In April, in the mid of the lock-down due to Corona, our roses were blossoming like rarely before, apparently  desperately longing to be admired by our first guest (the last image shows Leonor Venancio, modeling in a project by Sally Stafford, inspired by the myth of the roses and Raina Santa Isabel).