Artists | Despina

Kristyna Müller

01.04.2016 - 08.05.2016

Kristyna Müller is a curator working for Haninge Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden, since 2012. Previously she has been doing exhibitions on freelance basis and also worked for the Czech centre in Stockholm, the Vasa Museum, Stockholm. She holds an MA in Curating from Stockholm University and a BcA in still photography from FAMU, Prague.

Within her curatorial practice she has a particular focus on socially engaged practices, site-specific projects, as well as public interventions. She has curated several exhibitions within these topics as well as edited the publication “Konst, språk och kollisioner” (2015) that explores the work of Haninge Konsthall.

During her participation in Despina Residency Programme, she visited artists and curators discussing the topics of Rio de Janeiro’s fast changing landscape and urban development from economical, environmental, social and political perspectives. As a result of her stay, she presented a research concept titled “The placebo effect of utopia: a research project on urban space” (available in PDF here) during an open event in our space. Together with artist Vivian Caccuri, she organized the 25th Silent Walk/ Caminhada Silenciosa. In this particular walk, every participant was invited to bring some idea to do during the walk, seeds were planted and music was played among other actions. The walk is done under a vow of silence in order to explore the soundscape of the urban city. Learn more at http://caminosilencio.tumblr.com

Kristyna Müller’s residency was supported by Helge Ax: son Johnsons Stiftelse.

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Sarah Crew

01.03.2016 - 31.03.2016

Sarah Crew lives and works in Bristol and London, graduating with a distinction in MA Photography from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London in 2015. She is a mixed media artist and writer, working across installation, film, sound and live performance. Her research-based practice explores the changing relationships, connections and points of disjuncture between the human, the animal and the landscape. The implications of these are scrutinised through contemporary technology within an increasingly tactile dualistic environment.

For more info: www.sarahcrew.com

For Despina Residency Programme, Sarah will explore the evolving notions of landscape, locality and sense of ‘place’ within specific sites of reclaimed land in Brazil, and investigate the failure of technology in the sensory mapping of both the virtual and physical world simultaneously.

During the month of March 2016, Despina Residency Programme leads a special cycle in partnership with Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Four newly graduated artists were selected and commissioned through an open call conducted by the British institution to participate in our programme.

Helena de Pulford

01.03.2016 - 31.03.2016

Helena de Pulford lives and works in London (England). Graduated with a first class bachelors degree from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, she was awarded the Cass Art Prize and selected for the Acme associate studio programme. Helena’s artistic practice is primarily sculptural but also incorporates performance, writing and moving image. Her work reinterprets European visual history through the lens of contemporary gender theory.

Recent exhibitions include: 3×3 Collaborations for Art Licks Weekend 12 Orpen Walk, London (2015); Supermarket Sweep, Nice Galley, London (2015); Degree Show CSM School of Art, London (2015); Open Studios, 1 Granary Square, London (2014); Talking about Pink Salmon, 1 Granary Square, London (2014); Copy, Elthorne Road Project Space, London (2014) and Para-Site, Concourse Gallery, London (2013).

For the Despina Residency Programme, Helena will be looking at domestic rituals, gendered political activity and emerging feminist art practices in Brazil. Specific events will include ‘Host’ – a performance workshop at Largo das Artes.

For more information: http://www.helenadepulford.com/

Beatrice Vermeir

01.03.2016 - 31.03.2016

Beatrice Vermeir is a practicing artist, poet and critical writer based in London. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, BA Fine Art Sculpture, in June 2015 she has undertaken a residency at Grizedale Arts in Cumbria, where she was involved in a project combining local food history with local and historical figure John Ruskin’s experimental educational philosophy. The activities consisted of fermentation and cheese-making workshops as well as the running of a low-cost community cafe and vegetable garden. In November 2015, Beatrice collaborated with London based collective HouseRules to develop and realise a programme of artist-led walks in Peckham as part of the ArtLicks weekend. Beatrice is continuing to collaborate with this organisation, which focusses on re-purposing empty spaces in the city as educational or art-making spaces, in the development of a free summer school for 2016. Beatrice has also been involved in the capacity of director and costume designer in the theatrical production ‘You Are Me And I Am You” which played in late February at the VAULT Festival, Waterloo, London.

Beatrice’s varied and mostly collaborative practice is focussed on researching and re-enacting alternative modes of social organisation, work and education. As part of the Despina Residency Programme at Largo das Artes, Beatrice will undertake a research project that ties together the activities of three groups experimenting with notions of performance in relation to everyday life and the socio-political context of Rio in the 70s; the Living Theatre, the Theatre of the Opressed and Helio Oiticica’s Parangole series.

Carlotta Novella

01.03.2016 - 31.03.2016

Carlotta Novella, originally from Venice, where she graduated with a BA in Construction Management, she now lives and works in London where she graduated in 2015 from MA Architecture: Cities and Innovation at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She is currently working with the art and architectural practice public works.

Carlotta’s work addresses contemporary socio-political and cultural issues through a spatial lens, focusing on the interplay of use within and between private and public spaces. Her fifth year project, ‘Industrious Neighbourhoods’, proposed alternative urban strategies and design interventions to facilitate home-based work for social housing tenants. A great believer in collaborative work and making, her projects include temporary, socio-spatial and mobile structures, architectural drawings, participatory workshops, events and performances.

During her participation in the Despina Residency Programme, she will be will exploring existing typologies of collaborative work and communal making within the dwelling space of the home and the social space shared by the local community of a specific neighbourhood in Rio. With the medium of small scale manufacturing and collective making workshops, run both at the studios and outside the gallery over the residency period, she will create a set of objects, tools and props, inspired by the narratives and the necessities of a number of local residents running a business from home. These objects, eventually collected in a mobile archive, will be donated, shared and exhibited by the hyperlocal entrepreneurs and the community where they belong.

For more information: http://carlottanovellaworks.com/

Amanda Selinder

18.11.2015 - 18.12.2015

Amanda Selinder lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. She is just about to finish her BFA in Fiber Art at the University of Craft and Design in Gothenburg. For one year, she participated in an exchange programme in partnership with the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York. Some of her recent group exhibitions include “The Ruins” at SVA Gramercy Gallery; “Rock-Paper-Scissors” and “Printers Proof” at SVA Chelsea Gallery, both in New York; “Textilsommar” at Virserums Konsthall and “Textilepidemi” at Konstepidemin Gothenburg, both in Sweden.

Amanda’s practice mixes art and biology. Growing and aging are the central aspects in her work. Sustainability and questioning chemical produced materials are themes that are recurrrent too. She also likes exploring the textile feeling of unexpected materials. At the present, Amanda is investigating the possibilities to grow her own materials, her own color pigments and to use what we have around us in our daily life and in the nature. She works with different mediums such as screen-printing, installations, sculptures and performance, depending on the material she is growing or finding in the nature.

During her residence in Rio de Janeiro, she explored the colors and the materials found in the city. She used these materials (and leftovers) in the studio in order to explore the possibilities of them. Bringing different textures together, sewing them together, collecting, organizing and non-organizing. Her residency was funded by the August Ringnérs Scholorship.

Pictures Gallery

Joe Williamson

01.01.2016 - 29.02.2016

Joe Williamson lives and works in Nottingham (England). He is graduated from the Norwich University of the Arts (having studied for half a year at Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Universidade de Lisboa – Portugal). Joe’s work typically attempts to re-define and deconstruct how a human entity occupies space. Through the use of everyday materials and more traditional sculptural materials, he underpins a poetic truth of how we situate ourselves amongst objects. During his residence in Rio de Janeiro, Joe allowed influences to come into his work by referring to the history of Rio’s culture to create something prevalent within the present society. He is fascinated with things that are almost invisible and the tension on the longevity of an object.

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Catherine Boisvenue

01.01.20116 - 29.02.2016

Catherine Boisvenue lives and works in Montreal, Canada. She has recently graduated in Visual and Media Arts from the University of Quebec (Montreal). She also studied psycho-education, as well as a training course in artistic interventions at the Machincuepa Social Circus, located in Mexico. Alongside her artistic practice, Catherine is interested in the power that art can have on the human being and on a community. After participating in an exhibition last year at Memorial da América Latina in Sao Paulo, Catherine decided to strengthen her ties with Brazil through an artist residency. Selected to participate in our programme, she focused on a practice that combined painting with the relationship that she built with “the other” and the local culture.

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Cecilia Vilca

01.01.2016 - 29.02.2016

Cecilia Vilca lives and works in Lima, Peru. She holds a Masters Degree in Digital Arts, from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain), a Graphic Design Degree from the School of Design Toulouse-Lautrec (Lima, Peru) and a full scholarship in Geo Information Science and Atlas Design, from the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) – University of Twente (The Netherlands). She focuses her artistic activity on creating pieces made with technology (in concept and realization). These pieces explore relationships between technology and gender, society and nature. Her main goal is to encourage reflection through revelation, using technology as a “poetic of revelation”. Technology allows her to reveal a process or a behavior that society thinks is natural. Her projects range from those that are built with public participation and interactivity, to those that combine scientific methods such as electron microscopy and cartography. Crafted with programming where it controls the discourse, either by choosing what, how and when it shows. These results are non-linear works, with modularity, uncertainty and automation. The art piece is an object that does not exist as one, but as infinite versions without losing identity. She has exhibited and lectured in Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, Spain, Cuba, Chile and Norway. During her participation in our programme, Cecilia developed a project called “Future Relics”, which is an investigation about the power of objects as containers, where we add information and subjective contents. Also about data, they already have what is mutable and is “contaminated” by their environment, their chemical composition. The project explores scientific methods and combines them with data visualization and archeology. It is a confrontation of beliefs with the assumed coldness of data that speaks from the physical. It is a clash with the future. It is research, travel, process. They are “souvenirs of faith”.

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Carla Barchini

01.01.2016 - 29.02.2016

Carla Barchini lives and works in Beirut (Lebanon). She holds a Masters Degree in Psychology from the University of Geneva. She also followed an antique furniture restoration course in Florence (Italy), where she acquired alternative techniques with master craftsmen at the Palazzo Spinelli School. Strong of these classical traditions, she revisited them to start realizing her personal works. Her compositions tackle the themes of transcendence, liberation and the quest of self through inner journeys as she experiments on various supports, which are scraped, scoured, covered and transformed. The support she uses is mostly wood but also leather and iron, as well as discarded and recovered objects and elements, from the street or from construction sites, to which she assigns a story or a new life. She not only illustrates but also shapes her supports through the use of mixed media. By painting on hard as well as soft surfaces, Carla delves into the heart of matter while revealing its unexplored potential. During her residency in Rio de Janeiro, she aimed to find objects that were forgotten, thrown away or recycled, in order to create a structure, an ensemble related to what she’ll discover about the city.

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