Residency | Despina

Cristiano Lenhardt

01.08.2017 - 30.09.2017

Art and Activism in Latin America – year II (2017)

Born in Itaara, Rio Grande do Sul. Lives and works in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. Graduated in Fine Arts from Santa Maria Federal University (1996-2000), he participated in the Torreão Artistic Orientation in Porto Alegre from 2001 to 2003. Among his solo exhibitions, we highlight: “O habitante do plano para fora” (2015 ) and “Litomorfose” (2014), at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel Gallery, in São Paulo; “Matéria Superordiária Abundante” (2014) and “Planalto” (2013), at Amparo 60 Gallery, in Recife; Naifs Biennial of Brazil (2016); 32nd São Paulo Biennial (2016); “Cruzamentos”, at Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio / USA (2014); Rumos Visuais Itaú Cultural, São Paulo (2012); Mythologies – cite Internationale des Arts, Paris (2011).

He has received several national awards, among them: Bolsa Iberê Camargo – Artists Program Torcuato Di Tella University, Buenos Aires, 2011; “Projectile” – Prize for Contemporary Art, Funarte, Rio de Janeiro (2008); Videoart Contest Pize, Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, Recife (2007); SPA das Artes, Recife (2007 and 2004); 26th Salão de Artes Plásticas de Pernambuco (2006), among others. He also participated in artistic residencies in important spaces and institutions around the world, such as Phosphorus, in São Paulo (2013); Gasworks in London, UK (2013) and Made in Mirrors Foundation, in Guangzhou, China (2011).

Lenhardt’s artistic practice functions as an illusory game between the two-dimensional plane and the three-dimensional space. From videos, performances, observations, photographs, drawings and engravings, the artist seeks in ordinary and mundane reality tools to build a work that happens by attraction and transformation of materials and symbols.

ART AND ACTIVISM IN LATIN AMERICA is a Despina project, with the support of the Dutch organization Prince Claus Fund. The project extends for three years (2016, 2017 and 2018). Each year, a theme will guide a series of actions, including occupations, workshops, talks, film screenings, exhibitions, public talks with important names of contemporary artistic + activist thought and a residency programme. For this second edition, the project brings the BODY as its main theme and it runs from May to October. For more information, videos and pictures gallery, click here.

Alexa Eisner

01.08.2017 - 31.08.2017

Alexa’s work focuses on the exploration of body and environment, with an emphasis on identity construction and the boundaries between things. She invites a multidisciplinary process incorporating performance, mixed media, and installation.

Alexa studied communications at U.C. Berkeley where she was exposed to the critical and social theory which has informed her work ever since. Having danced most of her life, she spent several years focused as a modern dancer in the Bay Area, until attending Syracuse University for her MA in Communication Rhetoric. Her Master’s project blended phenomenology, social theory, and dance, to produce a community movement workshop to reflect on identity construction and cultivate empathy between self and other. This process was informed by her residency with Dance Exchange. She has also worked as a prop & fashion stylist for brands such as Apple and Levi’s, and has designed for commercial and residential interior design firms.

After moving back to San Francisco, where she still resides and works, Alexa began incorporating painting and mixed media into her movement work through photography, video, and live performance. Alexa often paints glass and plastic planes and then arranges the body behind them. In this process the body and environment blend into one. Her intension is to break down separations between identity ideology and to cultivate connection through shared human experience.

When considering how to strip down identity to its most basic form- deconstructing the body and material– the purity of the four elements remain: fire, air, earth, and water. As a sort of ecological excavation, in this residency, Alexa’s intension is to explore ritual with the elements- creating an interaction with the elements to embody our basic elemental nature. With installation and performance incorporating plastic or glass panes, Alexa will visually externalize internal layers of psyche and belief as it relates to our pure and yet complex nature of the elements.

More information
www.alexaeisner.com

Pictures Gallery
To be posted soon

Mariana Sameiro

01.08.2017 - 31.08.2017

Born in Portugal, works and lives in London. Sameiro is a multidisciplinary artist and designer, graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Visual Communication, where she is currently a visiting tutor.

Her personal practice looks at the new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene and the huge impact that humanity has on Earth. The Anthropocene is pathing the way for a hybrid type of material where the organic and inorganic are combined together, and the man-made and the natural are juxtaposed. Material resources of an industrial past are now forming future fossils and strata of man-made plastic composites. Sameiro explores and translates these ideas and unfold a narrative about Anthropocene, where future geology and archaeology become a narration of human culture.

In addition to her personal practice, she has worked as an independent curator, organising shows on Utopias/Dystopias as well as on digital and physical environments. The shows she organised took place in London, Berlin, Lisbon and Ithaca (Greece).During her residency at Despina, Sameiro intends to look at natural disasters and geological violations as a starting point for a possible future scenario. A scenario wherein fossils of the future are the ones we live with as a consequence of the increasing piles of waste. Taking this as a reference, she will do visual research for an installation/sculpture and a participatory/movable installation that would work as a workshop and performance place, its purpose will be to facilitate events on this topic to a wider public.

More information

marianasameiro.com

marianasameiro@gmail.com

instagram: marianasameiro

twitter: @MarianaSameiro

Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)

Romy Pocztaruk

01.07.2017 - 31.07.2017

Lives and works in Porto Alegre, Brazil. She holds a master’s degree in Visual Poetics from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Pocztaruk’s photography and video works deal with simulations and the positions from which the artist interacts with different places.

She has held solo exhibitions at the CDF Centro de Fotografia de Montevideo (2016), Centro Cultural São Paulo (2015), SIM Gallery (2014), Galeria Gestual (2014) and Goethe Institute of Porto Alegre (2013). Among the collective exhibitions: Uma coleção particular (2015), Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil; Telón De Fondo (2015), Backroom Caracas (in partnership with Fundação Cisneros), Venezuela; 31ª Bienal de São Paulo (2014); BRICS (2014), Oi Futuro Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Convite à Viagem – Rumos Artes Visuais (2011-13), Itaú Cultural, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro/Goiânia, Brazil; 9ª Bienal do Mercosul (2013), Porto Alegre, Brasil; Region 0 – The Latino Video Art Festival of New York (2013), Nova York; 64º Salão Paranaense (2012), Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil; Prêmio Diário Contemporâneo de Fotografia (2012), Casa das Onze Janelas, Belém do Pará, Brazil; Percursos Simulados(2011), Paço das Artes, São Paulo, Brazil; Simulated Pathways (2011), Skalitzer 140, Berlim, Germany. She has also taken part in artist residence programmes in China (Sunhoo Creatives in Residency), Germany. Berlim (Takt Kunstprojektraum), Instituto Sacatar (Bahia, Brazil) and New York (Bronx Museum), sponsored by the Iberê Camargo grant for artist residencies. Also participated in residences in the Bronx Museum (New York), funded by Bolsa Iberê Camargo; China (Sunhoo Creatives in Residency), Berlin (Takt Kunstprojektraum) and Instituto Sacatar in Bahia.

In 2016, Romy was awarded by Premio Foco Bradesco ArtRio with a residence at Despina in Rio de Janeiro. During her stay in Rio, she continued a project on the Brazilian secret nuclear program, exploring historical archives and research materials.

Photo Gallery (horizontel scrolling)

Ana Zegarra

01.07.2017 - 31.07.2017

Lives and works in Lima, Peru.

Zegarra develops her work from different physical and material means, mainly by using techniques of engraving and ceramics. She is interested in observing the moment when things are changing – in terms of collapse, contrast or opposition. From this point of view, the artist is able to play with the limit of meaning and materiality of things, with fantasy and mystique, with the “meta-corporeal.”

Her practice revolves around human existence and the uncertain and changing tendency that accompanies it. In this process, Zegarra seeks to highlight fragility as an inherent characteristic of the individual and also the systems of belief, feelings, identities and cultures, evoking the paradox and the bizarre. Not to mention the fragility of material seen in time, creating archeological references and metaphors in the “body-territory” fusion.

During her residence at Despina, Zegarra conceived a series of “ruin-objects”. In this process, the artist explored from the primitive forms to the pottery (and its fusion with the landscape), taking into account the passage of time and the power of nature over human creations.

More information
www.anazegarra.com
www.anazegarraartwork.tumblr.com
instagram: @satrina_

Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)

Shachaf Predilailo

01.07.2017 - 31.07.2017

Lives and works in Tel Aviv (Israel). Graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Jerusalem), specializing in ceramics and glass design.

After a period dedicated to more traditional materials such as glass and ceramics, Predilailo now turns to more ephemeral and transient materials like paper and salt. During her residency at Despina, the artist sought inspiration from the dizzying amount of materials available in the commercial area surrounding the studio space. Her intention in this process was to experiment with research and create a subjective mapping of environments driven by her own point of view and experience.

More information
www.shahafpredilailo.crevado.com
shachafp@gmail.com

Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)

Lyz Parayzo

01.05.2017 - 30.06.2017

Art and Activism in Latin America – year II (2017)

Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Manicurist and “puta-porn-terrorist”, Lyz Parayzo began her studies at the School of Visual Arts (EAV) at Parque Lage and started to invade art galleries with her aesthetic-political interventions. Like a virus, she has been subverting the power protocols of institutional spaces by blurring the boundaries of what is official. She has the body as her main work support and her daily performativity as a research platform. Parayzo’s plastic bombs destabilize heteronormative and colonial technologies, they are anabolic projections of her existence. The artist has been developing video-installations with post-pornographic content, military jewels and is currently researching the performances of gender and class from the perspective of the color in her “Salão Parayzo” project, a nomadic device in which she acts as a manicurist. Lyz Parayzo has been nominated for the Professional Art Investor Award – PIPA in 2017. Her residence at Despina is part of the activities of the second edition of the project Art and Activism in Latin America.

More information
cargocollective.com/lyzparayzo
lyzparayzo.tumblr.com

Pictures Gallery (Horizontal scrolling)
Photos by Frederico Pellachin, Raquel Romero-Faz and João Roma

Rafael Bqueer

01.05.2017 - 30.06.2017

Art and Activism in Latin America – year II (2017)

Born in Belém do Pará, lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Carnavalesco, costume designer, drag queen and bachelor of Visual Arts from the Federal University of Pará – UFPA. Bquerr got recently a grant from the Santander Exchange Program – School of Fine Arts / UFRJ. He also took several courses at the School of Visual Arts (EAV) at Parque Lage and received a grant to take part in the “Poetic Immersions” course at Casa França-Brasil. His residence at Despina is part of the activities of the second edition of the project Art and Activism in Latin America.

More information
banderaufpa@gmail.com

Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)

Gracey Zhang

01.05.2017 - 31.05.2017

Born and raised in Vancouver (Canada) – of Chinese and Taiwanese origin – , currently living in New York City (USA).

Newly graduated from the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), Zhang is a freelance illustrator. Her practice often deals in narrative, observing the motivations and actions stemming from the lives of others, and examining the physical environments they inhabit.

Her work ranges from large paintings, drawings, to editorial illustrations that attempt to convey the emotions of a person or group.

Zhang was warded a scholarship by The Lighton International Artists Exchange Program (LIAEP) to participate in Despina Residency Programme in May 2017.

More information
website: www.graceyzhang.com
instagram: @graceyyz
tumblr: graceyzhang.tumblr.com
vimeo: vimeo.com/graceyzhang

Supported by

Curatorial statement
by Carla Hermann
In Portuguese only, click here

Pictures Gallery (horizontal scrolling)
by Frederico Pellachin

Catarina Cubelo

01.04.2017 - 30.04.2017

Vive e trabalha em Londres (Inglaterra). É mestre em Artes Visuais pela Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Foi recentemente selecionada para o Mullehnlowe Nova Award e Red Mansion Art Prize.

Na sua prática artística, Catarina se interessa pela performatividade e a temporalidade das imagens. O seu trabalho envolve uma pesquisa sobre o tempo que as coisas precisam para se conhecerem e a importância do movimento do corpo como condição da tridimensionalidade das coisas. Essa pesquisa, por sua vez, é materializada em performance, escultura, escrita, desenho ou vídeo.

Durante a sua participação no Programa de Residências Despina, Catarina pretende investigar a diferença que marca a língua em potência. De conhecer esta língua, que é a sua, através da experiência simbólica do corpo em movimento. Uma pesquisa que constitui temporalidade como uma atividade de dinâmicas e afetos, que tenta engendrar hipóteses de teorias de percepção como uma teoria da experiência. O estranho que se encontra no caminho do passeio é uma postura a adotar para recuperar a experiência.

Mais informações
www.catarinacubelo.eu

Galeria de Fotos
Em breve