This page shows residents and their projects in 2024.
Other pages show residents and their projects in 2023, 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.

This page tells about most of the residencies and related events that took place in 2024. The most recent are in the newsletter.

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.

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.

Aurélie Ferrière (France, living in Sweden) is specialised in composing contemporary music. She came to finish a commission (facing a hard deadline):  writing a chamber opera (the libretto, and the music for four voices and ensemble). She worked dedicated like a hermit, and managed: two days before the end of her residency she submitted the work. It will premiere on 7 December in Budapest and a week later in Berlin. While still cooling down, 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.

Maj Rafferty (Denmark) is film-maker, theatre director and video artist. But at OBRAS she was working on her first novel. It is about a young woman in London, who is writing a university paper about Freud's Case of Dora, but while working on her paper she gets anxieties like Freud's patient, and thinks she suffers from a pop art disease: hallucinating about pop art.

Maj also did a side-project, partly in collaboration with Derek Spencer: after they visited the bones-chapel in Evora, Maj got fascinated by funeral. They invented Gunther, who’s deceased body, assembled from stones and branches, and was laid out for some days in the patio. Later, the remains of Gunther were brought in a ceremonial procession to his final resting place, where Maj recited a poem.  Maj explained that it was a funeral for all funerals that we wished to have attended but missed.

Usually, Yvonne Halfens (Holland) works with clay, but during her residency at OBRAS Yvonne started experimenting with papier-mâché. The summer heat speeded up the drying, and she was happy with some of the works, especially when the paper was soaked with pigments with vibrant colours.
Yvonne also made some miniature embroidery pieces in the same bright colours. And she managed to make a mould with papier-mâché that she could take home.

Annick Chevassu (UK) decided to use marble and cork as a starting point for her installations and small objects.
It resulted in marble slabs used as kind of billboard or as a base for painting figurines, and in pieces of cork with painted geometrical forms, floating in the crown of a tree.
When her partner Paul came over for some days, our shared dinners got a musical element. He is a gifted singer and guitar player, especially in blues.

Ella Zirina (Latvia, living in Holland) is jazz guitarist and composer. In February she came to OBRAS-Holland hoping to find a quiet space to compose music without distractions and responsibilities from the outside world. At her residence she felt that she could reconnect to her musical influences and, by taking walks in the nearby forest, ground herself into a calmer mindset that allowed her creativity to flow. She composed several pieces on guitar to be performed and recorded for her next album.

Tam Eastley (Canada, living in Berlin) was working on her second novel An Extinction Level Event. It tells about three women who have experienced similar events: they all saw a comet, suffered during the COVID pandemic, and felt stuck in their lives. But the differ in how they deal with them. Penelope now lives in Calgary and is obsessed with the comet and the past. Gem is an artist living in Berlin and is in a creative slump. Samworks online as a "background wife" and hates her job. As the novel progresses, the women will break free from what is holding them back—albeit in different ways and with differing outcomes.
The novel is about events that change us, and who we are when we come out the other side.

Kayla Kurin (Canada) left her country for a long-term tour along residencies in Portugal, Iceland, Greece and more. OBRAS was her first.
Kayla was working on her debut novel. It is story about two best friends trying to save their source of magic, which is disappearing. It touches on themes of climate change, capitalism, and extremism and features queer and disabled characters. At the end of her residency, she was nearly ready to submit a draft to literary agents.
Kayla was also working on a series of audio stories: bedtime stories for adults.

Stefano Falcone, jazz pianist from Naples, Italy, had a residency with us in 2021. We hope to organise a concert for him in the scope of Evora Capital of Culture 2027.
Stefana 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.

Holly Osborne (USA) had a residency in 2023. Several of her paintings were already sold before she left, other were exhibited in a beautiful solo show in Froelick Gallery, Portland Oregon USA, in April, May 2024.
While the majority of her paintings was figurative, she also moved towards abstraction: by using unrealistic colours, by not finishing parts of figures, by adding colour patches and by just applying forms that do not refer to any realism.

Janice Deary (South Africa, UK) returned to OBRAS. While her speciality is working with charcoal, she this time experimented with Indian ink, a totally different medium as making corrections is nearly impossible. As a source of inspiration she took poems of António Ramos Rosa (1924-2013). This Portuguese poet wrote about stones, leaves, sunlight, shadows – in a desire to return to a primordial, elemental state of being, to disappear into the earth, to become one with the trees, the sky, the wind, the rain. “I write, not to confirm, but to discover, to begin”.
Janice took sentences or words from a poem and made ink drawings that expresses her interpretation of the poem. Some were just experiments, but several others were incredibly beautiful and fascinating.
Janice also had a residency at OBRAS in 2023: see the video below. In April 2024 she showed some of her Portuguese works of 2023 in a solo exhibition in the prestigious Patriothall Gallery in Edinburgh.  

Gregorio Molina (Spain) is visual artist with an interest in relating 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 may include the drawings in the novel, but not as illustrations.
And during a shared dinner, Gregorio proofed to be a gifted singer.

Kedarnath Awati (India) is composer and arranger. At OBRAS he 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.
Kadarnath 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 cantas alentejanas, a fado, a blues and a Hindu folk song were sung.

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.

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)

Derek Spencer (USA) is theatre and film maker, and performer. At OBRAS he was working on a performance entitled Field of Flesh, that premiered in September 2024 in Chicago. The performance takes the form of a rambunctious immersive meal in which audiences join the actors around a dinner table of inedible food. It touches issues like familial interdependency, psychic decay, American culinary culture and the relationship between food and death.
At his artist talk, Derek also showed an example of video work he is currently exploring. In direct-address shots the video showed a cheerful cacophony of arguing and partying revellers who are escorted out of the nightclub by bouncers. Deeper layers in this video are about the limits of language and decision-making paralysis.

As part of their residency at OBRAS in May (see elsewhere on this page), 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.

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.

Nico Huijbregts (Holland) finished composing ten songs for a CD project. Nico names them 'songs' because they are not pop songs and not classical songs but something in between. For Nico all sources that inspires him, come together in the songs: jazz, pop, contemporary, musicals from the forties and fifties of the last century.
In addition, Nico prepared a concert in which he will sing Yiddish and Sephardic music. The concert will be on 29 September in InDeOudeVictor (Batenburg, Holland), on the occasion of an exhibition of sculptures of Yvonne Halfens. For a teaser check Nico’s FB site.

Sabine Schol (Austria) was working on a historical novel on female resistance fighters in WWII. Earlier this year she studied the archives of Venice on this subject. One of the chocking discoveries was that after the war they were treated as if they have been prostitutes rather than freedom fighters.
Sabine also working on PR for the novel she was working on during her residency in 2023 and that will soon be published. It is about Jewish refugees who in WW2 tried to escape Europe via Lisbon. She mixed facts that she discovered in archives in Lisbon and Bordeau (France), with fiction. Part of the fiction is a love story that takes place in Casa Miradouro: the cottage in which she was living during her 2023 residency.

Nora van Dam (Holland) was working on ‘The Parade’: an autobiographical personal storytelling performance. In recent years (partly during her previous residencies at OBRAS), Nora wrote a lot about her experiences and this year she composed a performance out of this material. She gave it the format of watching a festive parade: first high expectations and excitement, and then an anticlimax that then leads to new insights. The first draft of the performance has now been recorded on video. The piece is scheduled to premiere in January 2025 in The Netherlands. www.dramaplaats.nl

Martine de Kok (Belgium) is a multi-talent, which she experiences as both a gift and a burden. She spent much time on getting a new vision on her artistic career: do I have to focus or not?, do I push myself in a time management framework or not?, etcetera. Apart from that she was also productive with composing new songs and making drawings of birds. At her artist talk she presented some of her creations and played a beautiful improvisation on piano.

On 11 April, Sherry Wiggins was interviewed on TV about her performative photography project and especially about her mythical heroines. 

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 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. But essentially her paintings are about liberty, spirit, calm and (in her own words) an inner journey of longing, surrender and love.

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.
At OBRAS 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.

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.  

Seema Lyer (UK, living in Berlin) was writing several short stories. Her work is full of humour and absurdity, but in the same time contemplating on fundamental human issues, such as second thoughts on her upbringing, talking with friends about sexual desires and the line between being irritated and playing a mean trick. Two fragments show her stile:
A suitable boy - Fifty Shades of Beige on Substack 
My mum, a woman who once compared arranged marriage to finding a car in Auto Trader, also likes to chime in from time to time whenever she’s worried my womb might go stale. Her dating advice sounds like dialogue straight out of Mad Men. My personal favourites are “Don’t talk until after the wedding, then it will be too late for him to change his mind” and “Maybe you could become a secretary and marry your boss.” Ah, maternal guidance.

The Untimely Death of Edith Dubois
Edith directed her irritation towards breakfast, stabbing at her poached egg with particular venom. She chewed angrily, irritated by her constipation and the sniffling coming from the corridor. Of course whatshername had been a crier. The simple ones always are. Edith had clearly put Ethiopian Blend on the shopping list and underlined it three times. But whatshername had a mind like swiss cheese and was half as useful. No doubt she had been distracted with small talk with that acne riddled boy who didn’t know how to breathe through his nose. Edith was well within her rights to give her a dressing down.

Peter Bremer (Holland) was playing with new techniques, materials and ways of working. In his own words: “This time I liked to see my painting as meditation, so painting without thinking. Meditation and concentration met each other.
I choose to work with acrylic paint on water resistant sail tissue, with was both a challenge and fun to me: it impacted the making and correcting of a composition. I enjoyed it and am happy with the results.”

Although Antonio Tavares (Portugal) lives nearby, in March he was working at OBRAS to find the space, tranquillity and inspiration that he does not find at home. He was highly productive.  

In July, author and literary scholar Margreet den Buurman was working at OBRAS Holland 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 

In OBRAS Holland, León Biezeman continued working on Wouter op zoek naar woorden ('Wouter in search of words') and nearly finished it. It is a novel for dyslectic children. Leon wrote a teaser for us:
Where Wouter initially sees strange stripes in the newspaper and strange spots on the menu when he is sitting on a terrace with his grandmother, he slowly but surely begins to realize that he has lost all the words. Street names have disappeared from the signs, in shop windows he sees the pictures and prices of advertised goods, but words are missing. When Wouter goes on a train ride with his grandparents, grandpa asks him which platform they need for the train. Wouter panics when he only sees times and platform numbers, no place names. Fortunately, grandma, takes her reading glasses. Everything is fine again... for now....

Also Good To Know:

In the past seven years Wilma Geldof came nearly every year to work on her novels. One of them: Het meisje met de vlechtjes (The girl with the braids) is highly successful. The book just got its fifth edition in Dutch, is translated into eight languages, got five awards and will be made into a movie. At this moment the film locations are being selected.

During her residency in 2023, Fien Veldman (Holland) was working on an essay about stone. It will soon be published in Tirade.  We are very eager to read it, in the first place because Fien is a highly gifted and successful writer, but also because in this essay Luis and Holly (a friend and a resident) are featuring.

Kevin Tolman (USA) had a great solo exhibition in Nüart Gallery in Santa Fe (Los Angeles, USA). Silhouettes of antas (prehistoric graves), snips of Portuguese flyers and titles in Portuguese hint to his sources of inspiration. Seven times, Kevin was resident at OBRAS-Portugal and he will return in November.  

Some more news about OBRAS
 
The annual report on the OBRAS activities in 2023 is now available on request.

In 2021 Foundation OBRAS made a kind of a new start. It got two new board members, it updated its statutes and the House Governance Rules, and adopted the newest regulations and codes on Governance Culture, on Fair Practice and on Diversity & Inclusion. See this page for more info.