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.
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. |
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