open call

23.05.2022- 30.06.2022

OPEN CALL!!

Despina Residency Programme 2022/2023 for artists and curators.

Deadline for submitting applications: 30 June 2022.

Slots available from July 2022.

To participate and learn more about the programme, costs and selection process, download Despina Residency Programme 2022-2023.


			

miguel keerveld

01.05.2022 - 31.05.2022

Reopening the international Residency agenda, and two years later than planned, Surinamese artist and curator Miguel Keerveld is finally participating in our programme. During the month of May, Keerveld will advance his curatorial research that aims to contextualize experiences of her performative persona @tumpiflow, focusing on social urbanization and what is known (and recognized) as a “favela”. Keerveld is especially interested in knowledge distribution and social activities as political forces.

 

wanja kimani

wanja kimani
15.05.2022 - 30.06.2022

Wanja Kimani was the artist selected for the Plural Artists in Residence Programme, a project by the British Council Brazil in partnership with Despina.
Wanja Kimani was born in Kenya and lives in the UK. Her work flows between performance, film, text and textiles. Driven by stories about real and imaginary people and places, she inserts herself into narratives and uses her body to explore rituals, objects and the rural landscape.
Artists in Residence is an online artist residency program in the field of art and culture that aims to develop ideas, experiment with new practices and create connections.
The other selected artists for this first edition of the programme, and their respective Brazilian partner organizations, are: Susan Thompson – Instituto Mesa (RJ), Annabel McCourt – Diversa (SP) and Jelly Cleaver – PretaHub (SP).

MAYARA VELOZO

MAYARA VELOZO
14.02.2022 - 22.04.2022

Mayara Velozo lives and works in Morro do Salgueiro, north of Rio de Janeiro. Graduated in art history at UERJ, she is a farmer, visual artist and researcher. She works with performance, photoperformance, poems, video installation and, more recently, with sculptures in textiles and construction materials. Her poetics come from a constructive and subjective dimension of family relationships, approaching her home and places of conviviality. She talks about personal and collective construction, her family’s autonomous nature in building and rebuilding architectural dreams and how nature can be a sign of these events. The artist is a member of the Trovoa collective, and has gone through residencies at MAM Rio, Parque Lage, Paço Imperial, among others. Mayara participates in Despina Residency Program from March to April 2022.

STEFANIE FERRAZ

STEFANIE FERRAZ
14.02.2022 - 22.04.2022

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Stefanie Ferraz lives and works between Rio and London.

Having graduated in 2011 with a degree in Product Design from PUC-Rio, Stefanie moved to London to do her Masters in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts (2016) and the Slade School of Fine Art (2018).

Her artistic practice explores how the process of painting can be used to tell strange stories that move seamlessly between excitement and discomfort, pleasure and pain.

This fluidity in the perception of image is informed by the means of applying the paint. For example, when using large amounts of solvent, the artist proposes a sort of ‘aquatic materiality’, wherein the image dissolves, revealing in its place layers of the process itself.

Stefanie’s research amalgamates a plethora of references, ranging from Renaissance paintings, through digital pornography to the tarot and the carioca carnival. These references are all linked by ideas around the body and sexuality.

At Despina, she will deepen her research into the tarot. For the first time, she will focus particularly on the suite of hearts through which she will tell the story of a troubled relationship.

Previous Exhibitions include: Care Don’t Care at Basis Projektraum, Frankfurt (2021), Unlocked at Candid Arts Trust, London (2020), The Land of No Evil at Offshoot Gallery, London (2019), NOMAD #1 Accidents Never Happen, Cluj (2018).

Marina Lattuca

Marina Lattuca
14.02.2022 - 22.04.2022

Marina Lattuca was born in Rio de Janeiro and uses writing, painting, drawing and sewing to develop her own archetypes and mythologies. The artist has a degree in Journalism from PUC-RJ and was a student at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage. In 2021, her short story “Death or the imminence of what is about to cease to exist” was selected and published in the Off Flip Prize collection. Within her practice, Marina is dedicated to writing images and drawing texts. Through a kind of autopoiesis, her research focuses on the invention and reinterpretation of new mythologies and mysticisms, having her own body and memories as the object of experiments. In an almost archaeological process, the artist seeks to stratify different layers of the soul, investigating one by one. Marina participates in Despina Residency Program from February to April 2022.

Residency programme for LGBTQIA+ UK artists

Plural is a four-week digital residency programme for UK and UK-based LGBTQIA+ artists, supported by the British Council and hosted by four Brazilian partners: Despina, Instituto Mesa, Diversa Art and Culture and PretaHub. UK residents will develop new ideas, experiment with their practice and make new connections through engaging with the partners’ local cultural landscape.

Residencies are self-directed by the artist, with support and guidance from the host partner. Applicants are invited to propose a project idea to help structure their work and time. Through working with the host organisation, they will be encouraged to make new connections and explore a variety of ideas, both expected and unexpected. Residencies will have an active agenda of meetings, encounters, attending online cultural events, writing time and so on.

Residents are expected to present digital work (for example, online exhibition, performance, etc) during the residency and engage in activities such as workshops or talks. In addition, residents are asked to document their residency to share with public audiences.

OBJECTIVES

  • Build relationships between artists, organisations and communities in Brazil
  • Offer extraordinary experiences which enable LGBTQIA+ artists to develop their artistic practice, experiment with new ideas and ways of working
  • Open up opportunities for LGBTQIA+ artists in international marketplaces
  • Enable cultural organisations to work differently and strengthen practices through hosting LGBTQIA + artists

WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?

Plural Artists in Residence is open to LGBTQIA+ UK artists. We will look to match individuals with host partners’ own interests as much as possible. Artists may be performers, visual artists, designers, filmmakers, writers, etc.

Residents will be selected through an application and interview process.

For more information and how to apply, please visit the  British Council Brazil website.

Ania Reynolds

Ania Reynolds
01.08.2021 - 31.01.2022

Trilha Sonora is an investigation into the relationship between sound and moving image, and explores the power of music and sound to convey and dictate narrative and emotion. Artist and composer Ania Reynolds has composed for art forms of every description, from circus to film to theatre to podcasts to performance art. In this work she explores the role of the soundtrack as a storyteller by creating one short video with three distinctly different soundtracks, which will be accessed via three sets of headphones. Audiences will have the chance to choose their own soundtrack adventure, or compare the different sonic narratives.

Originally planned as a follow-up residency to Ania’s 2019 Despina residency project Música de Coco, Trilha Sonora has evolved into a cross-cultural artistic collaboration due to the travel restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead of travelling to Rio to make the work, Ania is collaborating remotely with Rio artist Anna Costa E Silva, who, on the ground in Rio de Janeiro, will gather video footage of Rio which she will send to Ania to create the video component of the work. Ania will then score the video from her home studio in Melbourne, Australia, and the final work is planned to be presented at Despina in Rio in early 2021.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

      

Marcela Cavallini

Marcela Cavallini
01.03.2020 - 31.03.2020

Marcela Cavallini lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Performer, sudaka dancer and yoga teacher, the artist is interested in fictional processes of the body and the relationship between culture and society, from the perspective of memory, ethics, feminism and the environment.

Master’s student in the Post-Graduate Program in Contemporary Studies of the Arts at Universidade Federal Fluminense. Specialist in Science, Art and Culture in Health at Instituto Oswaldo Cruz -FIOCRUZ. Degree in Dance from Faculdade Angel Vianna and in Biological Sciences from Universidade Federal Fluminense. Studied at Parque Lage’s EAV Foundation Program. Graduated professionally in Contemporary Dance from the School of Theater and Dance Fafi-ES.

Worked in partnership with other artists and collectives in dance, performance and visual arts projects, including: arts project in community collaboration “Estampar Movimento em Cor”, awarded by the Cultural Microprojects award of the extinct Ministry of Culture; video performance Ata-Duras, part of Panorama de Artes Visuais in Belo Horizonte; “Would I Eat Meat from Bulls?” dance-theater show awarded by SECULT-ES; “Bunda e Progresso”, participant of the Belo Horizonte Performance Festival and of the Aldeia SESC-ES; “Scarpin-me – Imagem e Desafio”, a program of performances and creation in residence together with the group Obscena-BH, awarded by the SECULT-ES artistic residency notice. Selected with the group Acção through the Cultural Diversity award with the Arts, Carnival and Social Empowerment Project “Perseguidas – I like being a woman!”.

Her last solo works participated in the Latin American Festival of Art and Activism -UYU and Festival Corpos Críticas-RJ. Currently, she is linked to BRISA Lab with the artistic residency “Sensitive Territories: Baía de Guanabara” financed by the Prince Claus Fund and the Goethe Institut.

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To Those Who Intent to Cross Walls: Performance between Residences

On March 16, halfway through the artist’s residence, Despina closed due to Covid-19. Following the initial proposal of conducting residencies within the residency, and in dialogue with six other artists – Edzita Sigo Viva, Clarice Rito, Tuk Melo, Ara Nogueira, Dulce Lysyj and Anna Cecilia Cabral – the exchanges continued remotely and the developments are a document of this difficult time in which we isolated ourselves in the face of an unprecedented crisis and epidemic.

The results can be seen in this PDF document, produced collaboratively by the artists.

More information
pornosascorpas@gmail.com
https://cargocollective.com/marcelacavallini

Photo Gallery (browse horizontal arrows)

Roberta Vaz

Roberta Vaz
16.02.2020 - 28.02.2020

Born in Bagé (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Studied Performing Arts at UFRGS / POA and soon moved to London – United Kingdom, where she acted in and directed dance pieces in places such as Robin Howard Theater of Dance, Battersea Arts Center, Camden People’s Theater, ICA and Hoxton Hall. Also in the UK, she graduated in Visual Arts at Central Saint Martins – University of the Arts London.

Her video works, performances and installations appeared in group exhibitions in Le Manicle – Le Havre / France, Strangelove Moving Image Festival – London, Supernormal – Ipsden / United Kingdom, Horatio Jr. – London, Kulturhaus – Stockholm, Waterside Contemporary – London, City Art Festival – Porto Alegre, Vitrine Gallery – London, Santander Cultural – Porto Alegre, Alma Enterprise – London and Bronze – Porto Alegre. She has published in Auto Italia South East – London and in Take Care Magazine – Milan. Her last exhibition (Dioptre – Display) took place in Berlin, in november 2019, and is now being shown at Galeria Prego, in Porto Alegre (from February to March 2020).

More information
www.robertavaz.com
Instagram: @robbievaz

Pictures Gallery
to be posted soon