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.
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 has to write a university paper about Freud's Case of Dora, but while writing she begins to get symptoms and anxieties like Freud's patient, and thinks she suffers from a popart disease, where she hallucinates popart.
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 skeleton was assembled from stones and branches and was resting for some days in the patio. Later, the remains of Gunther were in a ceremonial procession brought 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 to see how I could use this material in my work. The summer heat speeded up the drying, but at times Yvonne was longing for working in clay. At the end she was happy with some of the works, especially when the paper was soaked with pigments that resulted in vibrant colours.
Yvonne also made some miniature embroidery in the same bright colours. And she made a mould with papier-mâché of an abandoned pedestal and took it 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, our shared dinners got a musical element. He is a gifted singer, guitar player. Especially his blues was great.
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 yet deal with them in different ways. They all saw a comet, suffered during the COVID pandemic, and feel stuck in their lives. In 2003, Gem and Penelope they saw a comet. 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. Sam’s story takes place in 2032 in Calgary where she works online as a "background wife". She 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—seemingly large and small—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 Evora in the summer for 2024.
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 exhibited in Denver, USA in March 2024. Holly was painting every day. In a very organised manner, she worked on several paintings in the same time. She was inspired by the lush vegetation around her as well as the swimming pool.
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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