This page shows residents and their projects in 2023.
Other pages show residents and their projects in 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2012 and 2013 and 2004-2011.
A visual collage of residents is in this slide show.
Other pages show residents and their projects in 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2012 and 2013 and 2004-2011.
A visual collage of residents is in this slide show.
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This page tells about most of the residencies and related events that took place in 2023. The most recent are in the newsletter.
Jil Guyon (USA) is a performing artist who came to explore the abandoned marble quarries as a site for new videos in her ongoing WIDOW project. It is a collection of solo pieces in which she performs the elements of the widow character: grief, transcendence, arise, survive, wander and so on. It can also be seen as an investigation of female agency in the wake of loss.
While her trials in the quarries were disappointing, partly due to strong winds, she discovered the high potential of the rooftop of Evoramonte castle: she fell in love with the location because of the extra-ordinary and yet simple architectural forms. Gil showed the first results during her artist talk; they were highly promising. Veronica Syrotkina (Ukraine) was more than relieved to escape for a month the war in her country. After two years she finally could dedicate herself again to her profession and passion: painting. Veronica is strongly influenced by the French painters of the 20th century. Her still lives are intriguing due to their powerful colours.
Veronica joined an excursion to a quarry. She got nostalgic feelings because it reminded her to her youth in Odessa. 
Seema Lyer (UK, living in Berlin) was working on three, very different stories.
One is was a non-fiction, though absurd story about a woman who was by error officially declared death and was trying already for five years in vain to get this declaration reversed. A second story was about Priya, a six years old girl who tries understand the absence her brother. He died but her parents do not tell her. Often Priya hears family members talk about him, so she fantasizes that he is invisible, and that he is an invisible friend of her. A third story was about a toothbrush that suddenly disappeared out of a young woman´s bedroom. She concludes that this must be a Houdini act of her boyfriend. He has always been good in disappearing acts and she has a long-time experience in being the magician’s assistant. Now also most of his clothes have disappeared, but she could recognize all the signs of a poorly executed disappearing act… Gerry van der Linden (Holland) was writing a series of poems, some of them she recited at her artist talk. One poem: fallen angels, included lines that she was singing. Gerry was also working on an autobiographical novel that she started last year.
And she made lots of small installations with found objects or her own drawings, which she often gave poetic titles. During her residency she received the message that she was nominated for the Adriaan Roland Holst poetry award, probably the most prestigious poetry price in Holland. Martine de Kok (Belgium) is a multi-talent: pianist, singer-song writer, visual artist and novelist. During her residency she was finishing a book she started on in her previous residency. A children’s book that talks about the phenomenon of time. A lot of birds, with a robin in the leading role, go deep into the forest to find time, even although none of them knows how time looks like and each have a different expectation.
At her artist talk Martine read the synopsis and followed by slide show with the drawings that will illustrate the book. During the slide show she did a beautiful jazzy improvisation on the piano. On the last day of her residency Martine mailed her draft to the most renown publisher for children’s book in Belgium and the day after she got her invitation to discuss publication. 
Sabine Schol (Austria) was working on a historical novel on Jewish refugees who in WW2 tried to escape Europe via Lisbon. She mixes facts that she discovered in an photo archive in Lisbon, with fiction, including a love story that takes place in Casa Miradouro: the cottage in which she was living at her residency.
Anna Geary-Meyer (USA, living in Berlin) was working on a novel: Chocolate mouse, that tells, among others, about the fear and wish of a young woman to be pregnant. The woman is sexually confused and lives a bohemian, opportunistic life. In a deeper layer the novel also contemplates on a time spirit in which writing about personal trauma and suffering seems to have become fashion, as if life becomes more beautiful by experiencing violence. Anna´s writing is also informed by her professional training in clinical psychology.
During her artist talk Anna did read out fragments of several stories. She showed to be an expert in writing about heavy subjects in a light, humorist way. And she was highly productive during her residency: she wrote 160 pages. Stefano Falcone, jazz pianist from Naples, Italy, had a residency with us in 2021. He composed a series of beautiful works, all dedicated to OBRAS. They were first brought to stage on the piano festival of Lecce, Italy in September 2022, and later published on SoundCloud. A beautiful teaser is on YouTube (see below). It gives a sample of his music, but also indicates how his music inspired fellow residents. A CD entitled OBRAS is released (www.worklabel.it) and distributed (www.IRD.it). The CD includes a flyer with texts by several residents. The CD cover was designed by Tim Gleason.
In 2021 and 2022, Sherry Wiggins (USA) and Luís Branco (Portugal) made an incredible body of work, both at OBRAS-Portugal and OBRAS-Holland, for “The Heroines” an ongoing project in which Luis is photographing Sherry while she is recreating historical or mythical figures: Eve, Salome and Judith and others. There is a feminist concept behind the work. Fifteen photos in large scale format are currently shown as part of the exhibition “Exit Paradise” at the contemporary art gallery Seidel City in Boulder, USA. The show ran until 30 April.
Charlie Wührer (UK, living in Berlin) is a queer writer and literary translator. Her writing can be found in literary journals, in writing competition anthologies, spoken on audio porn apps, dramatically read at events in Berlin, and on surtitle screens in theatres across Germany. At OBRAS, she is working on her first novel, which is about a young woman’s journey from people-pleaser to "feminist killjoy," able to express and act on rage, and to rewrite old narratives. She does this with the help of a witchy "rage mentor“ who sets her challenges.
Charlie has also been inspired, partially by an epic storm at OBRAS in the evening of 4 June, to write poetry, and is determined to climb the writing tree before she leaves. More info: charlotte-wuehrer.com Janice Deary is a South-African visual artist, living and working in Scotland. She studied philosophy before completing her art education. Janice specialised in charcoal drawing.
At OBRAS she made four 150x110 cm drawings of wild oat, growing abundantly around the residency. The four drawings show an impression of oat in the four seasons. Janice is deeply inspired by East-Asian art and has a strong interest in the basic principles of Daoïsme. Dao includes Emptiness, Form, Movement and Rest, with which it creates orderly patterns in the chaos. It reflects the belief that change is the most basic character of things. The Wild Oats series follows these basic Daoïstic principles. More info: janicedeary.com Ingrid Simons (Holland) is specialised in painting, graphic art and ceramics. Since 2010 she has worked at OBRAS annually. Looking back, this has been an essential turning point in her 25-year career. She connected to the Alentejo: its mistic nature and starry nights, but also its traditional ceramics and the abandoned marble quarries.
In 2023 she started her residency with her 8th Portuguese solo exhibition (see elsewhere on this page). During her residency she made a new series of paintings and experimented with site specific performances. In one she was painting on a 5-meter paper rol, deep down in a marble quarry. She had collaborations with José Rodrigues (essay), Pedro Cabral (film), Luís Rosado (ceramics) and fellow residents (multi media). More info: www.ingridsimons.com , insta: simons.ingrid Peter Van Huffel (Canada, living in Berlin) is a saxophonist and composer. At OBRAS he was exploring the combination of saxophone with effect pedals and live electronics processing. He brought his baritone saxophone for this. He was learning new music software to achieve superior sound, and made extensive recordings in a variety of resonant spaces; in a marble quarry and in nature around OBRAS. But he has developed his deepest interest in the extremely resonant sound in the fortress of Evoramonte. He has visited the fortress on numerous occasions, during which he has been recording and filming his work with the intention of developing a full-length performance video.
Peter is working with several bands. Since 2021 he released some 20 albums. More info: petervanhuffel.com gorillamaskmusic.com Angelique Delcroix (France) is a multi-talent. She was doing some graphical designing as part of her pay job (she runs a small publishing house), but most of her time she spent on exploring details of her surroundings and bringing her observations into a conceptual setting. She has a special interest in fragility; not as a weakness, but as a strength and as a trigger for creativity. She collected materials from nature (dead branches for instance), the local flee market (jute sacks) and her own recycle stuff (dry tea bags), all having earthy colors in common, and made drawings, small collages and embroidery works with it. It all seem to tell about “powerful fragility”.
Mario Moroni (Italy, living in USA) was working on a very long poem (40 pages), with the classical tragedy of Medea as a starting point. Mario considered that the role of Medea can be interpreted in many ways. So, in his poem Medea is mentioned in plural. And, by bringing Medea into the contemporary he decided that his tragedy will get an open end. Mario managed to finalise the poem in first draft. It will become part of a larger volume that will be published in Italian in 2024.
A specialty of Mario is poetry performance. Several times during his residency he presented his poems, accompanied with slides, videos, life music of Beate Schnaithmann (on cello and percussion with marble slabs) and his own theatrical gestures. 
Holen Sabrina Kahn (USA) is a rewarded filmmaker. Her multiple rewarded film A Quiet Inquisition was screened in sixty countries. But at OBRAS she was working on a novel; Shipwrecked.
Beatrice, an econometrician discovers a 17th century script consisting almost entirely of prime numbers. While she tries deciphering the numbers into words, she meets other persons, both in the 17th century and in the present. All kinds of characters meet each other in a dazzling story, switching between queer desire, theological discourse, dramatic shipwrecks, artistic achievements and birdwatching. The story is turbulent, but is strongly structured, with four repeating chapter titles; Voyage, Exile, Shipwreck, End - which derive from a sixteenth-century Portuguese poem. The contemporary story is told in a third person narrative, and a seventeenth century one in first person pronoun. 
Bianca Ludewig (Germany, living in Austria) came to work on an English version of her PhD thesis. It is about transmedia festivals, a phenomenon that appeared in the early 1990th. It combines electronic music with other art forms. Bianca investigated the relation between art and societal developments. The English version is meant to be informative to a broader audience than just the scientific scene. Bianca worked day and night and managed to finish 80% of the manuscript. In between she found time to collect sounds for a soundscape on marble sawing machines.
Paulien Jocher (Austria, living in Italy) came for a short residency. While her pay job as a designer is working with digital media, she loved to make drawings with colour pencils. Her subject became “clouds”, especially the spectacular clouds at sunset.
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