Artists | Despina

Luciana Magno

01.09.2016 - 31.10.2016

Art and Activism in Latin America – year I (2016)

Lives and works between Belem and Fortaleza, Brazil. She is graduated in Visual Arts and Technology of the Image from the University of Amazonia, Belém. She also holds a Master Degree from the Federal University of Pará, in the same city. Her works deal with performance, often directed to photography and video, object and website. Magno’s research focuses on the body and performative actions. She has been interested in political, social and anthropological issues, related to the impact of the development of the Amazon region, in the north of Brazil. The integration of the body to the landscape and the environment is a key and recurrent element in her works, which have been exhibited in various spaces, such as Centro Cultural Banco do Nordeste, Fortaleza (2014); Museu de Arte do Estado do Pará – Art in Pará – Belém (2014) and Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro – MAR (2013). She was the winner of the 10th edition of Rede Nacional Funarte Artes Visuais Programme with the project “Telefone Sem Fio”, which crossed the country from north to south through highways and waterways. This project led to a video and an audio file about Brazilian cultural diversity, its history and geography.

More information
http://www.lucianamagno.com

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 first edition, the project brings the PUBLIC SPACE as its main theme and it runs from September to October. For more information, videos and pictures gallery, click here.

Jennifer Taylor

01.08.2016 - 31.08.2016

A London-based artist, working with live performance, experimental film and large-scale installation. Jennifer completed her MA in Sculpture at the Royal Collage of Art and obtained a first-class honours degree from the Ruskin School at the University of Oxford. She has exhibited at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, The Wapping Project and The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Art First in Bologna and Modern Art Oxford.

Jennifer’s work is concerned with the energy that exists as systems, technologies and behaviour become excessive, and are pushed towards a state of crisis or breakdown and grow beyond control. The anticipatory anxiety of this moment manifests itself in the form of live performances with giant balloons which threaten to burst, chaotic installations which hover at the brink of collapse and process-based drawings which push the mind, body and paper to their limits.

She is also interested in the concept of transhumanism and the future augmentation of the human body through technology. With this comes the terror of machine take-over and our potential helplessness in the face of technological malfunction or system overloads. Jennifer wants to explore the horror of finding ourselves physically entrapped and enslaved by corrupted machines. Her films therefore often degenerate into farcical pantomimes of low-fi cyborgization. Giant balloons seem to meld themselves onto the form of a solitary female figure, like some loathsome parasites. They slowly seem to reduce her to a malformed, primordial version of herself. Lost within desolate landscapes, with obscure ancient relics, this singular, isolated figure seems trapped within an impossible nightmare, with no one to rescue her. Perhaps she is the last remaining human left on Earth?

More information
http://jennifertaylor.co

Pictures Gallery
to be posted soon

Kira Shewfelt

01.07.2016 - 31.07.2016

Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA. Her interest lies in the pursuit of idealism and it’s “practice”. Nature, intimacy, movement and gesture are recurrent subjects in her work. Kira’s imagery draws upon personal relationships as well popular depictions of optimal gestures: instructional manuals, travel photography, illustrations of exercise and dance, yoga girls, ancient glyphs, and the visual documentation of social movements. The politics of pleasure, how it manifests, and is remembered are foundational concepts in her practice.

The action of painting the figure and the flux of movement engaged in making also become gestures of idealism, creating images that highlight transitional states, potential or curiosity. During her month at Despina Residency Programme, Kira will be researching the historical movement of modern Brazilian painting towards performance and the embrace of body as a nexus for subjectivity and culture. She plans to develop a series that responds to performance as remedy.

Dilemma: I miss you I love you, I miss you I love you. Resolution: Let’s dance.

More information
http://kirashewfelt.com

Pictures Gallery

Bernardita Bertelsen

01.06.2016 - 31.06.2016

Visual artist from Santiago, Chile, with an MA in Visual Arts from Universidad de Chile. Her work mainly focuses on three general concepts: repetition, material transformation and multiplicity, all of them under the eaves of the continuous contradiction and dualities to which we are exposed. Everything can be perceived in multiple forms and can go through an infinite variety of interpretation. Even beyond, we are corporal and mental multiplicity.

Bernardita understands repetition as a mayor contradiction, due to the possibility and impossibility of it. Time passes and it’s gone; yet, we constantly repeat, day-to-day. We can repeat shapes, images, objects, acts. Music and theatre are pure repetition. What varies, what makes repetition impossible are the different manifestations of the essential. She thinks of repetition in several ways, such as: a validation of thoughts and feelings towards others and ourselves; repetition as a searching method for comprehension; repetition as an illusion of order and control. Foremost, repetition as a mimesis of the cyclic movements and ways of the Universe, consequently, endless repetition.

She holds a very intimate relationship with materials. Therefore, she manipulates them in order to discover their possibilities of transformation, remove their functional origin with the expectation of expanding them and proceed on the intangible. Essence and material are somehow forced to co-exist.

During her participation in Despina Residency Programme she will be working on a project called “Pending Images”, which consists in developing several projects and images that haven’t been yet materialized. As well, is highly important including the local context and perspectives that are implied for living the three months Residency in Rio de Janeiro.

More information
http://bbertelsenm.wix.com/bernardita-bertelsen

Pictures Gallery

Camila Cavalcante

01.06.2016 - 30.06.2016

Camila Cavalcante is a visual artist with a background in journalism and art criticism with a varied interest in investigating the conceptual, sentimental and social perception of art. Through the use of documentary photography, her work intertwines embroidery, collage and installation to create a place in which the idea of ‘private’ and ‘public’ overlaps and complements each other.

Coming from the Northeast coast of Brazil and after living in three other countries, settling in Scotland, she is curious about finding common grounds between different cultures, countries and people. The study of the landscape led her to explore the way it unfolds into abstracted ideas of space, ‘bodyscape’ and social conventions. Camila uses photography to project herself onto her subjects, dissolving perceived borders, cultural differences and nationalities; immersing herself, her body and her art into a shared anthropological experience.

During her residency in Rio de Janeiro, Camila will develop the project Us for All, in which she explores the idea of the female body as a confrontational space. The project creates a community of woman collaborating to challenge recent conservative actions of the State to repress and diminish woman’s reproductive rights in Brazil.

Camila holds a degree in Journalism from the Federal University of Alagoas, a post-graduate degree in Journalism and Cultural Criticism from the Federal University of Pernambuco – both in Brazil – and a Masters of the Arts Degree from University of Westminster, in London. She won two photography national prizes in her home country and took part in over 20 exhibitions in Brazil, US and UK. This is her third residency and she has widely published her work in art magazines in the UK, where she works for The Sutton Gallery and the London School of Photography.

More information

www.camilacavalcante.com
www.camilacavalcante.tumblr.com
www.flickr.com/photos/cavalcantecamila
www.facebook.com/camilacavalcantevisualartist

Pictures Gallery

Silvia Binda Heiserova

01.05.2016 - 31.05.2016

Silvia Binda Heiserova lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia. She graduated from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain), Faculty of Fine Arts, where she is currently enrolled in a Doctoral Programme in Artistic Practice and Research.

Silvia’s artistic interest lies in the critique of western phallocentric power structures, symbols and vestiges. She focuses on concepts of symbolic masculine power, its historical contexts, mechanisms of its establishing, while rethinking patterns of social perception and psychology of colour. Thus she experiments with hybridization of elements, colours and forms with the aim to question the legitimacy of phallocentric power through its symbols.

During her participation in Despina Residency Programme, Silvia will work on a project analysing the urban memory of Rio de Janiero from a feminist perspective. Her research will be focused on how history is represented and interpreted in the urban space through commemorative elements in a context of gender hierarchy.

More information: http://www.silviaheiserova.com/

Pictures Gallery

Linda Söderholm & Žiga Gerbec

01.05.2016 - 30.06.2016

Linda Söderholm & Žiga Gerbec live and work in Ljubljana, Slovenia. They are involved with dance, music, hip hop culture and mixed media. Both are bboys/bgirls (breakdancing) and utilize other elements of hip hop culture such as graffiti and DJing. Together with other members of the Slovene NGO association GOR – www.drustvogor.org and www.facebook.com/drustvo.gor – they organize different club events, dance jams, workshops and other hip hop related events on a weekly basis. GOR strives to develop the local hip hop scene and educate the youth interested in hip hop.

Linda has a Master of Arts degree in New Media from Aalto University School of Arts and Design, MediaLab Helsinki, Finland as well as a Master of Arts in Russian language and literature from the University of Helsinki. She works as a freelance graphic designer and is enthusiastic about design, typography, graffiti, analog/digital photography and video (http://superflinda.fi ).

Žiga started bboying in 2004 and has since then participated in many international breaking events around the globe. He is active in developing the local scene in Slovenia, where he teaches breaking classes and organizes various events. Besides this he is also an eager record collector and a DJ.

During their residency in Despina Residency Programme, they plan to organize an event by the work title “Shadow Olympics”. The piece is a logical continuation to our previous work about bboys/bgirls done in West Africa (2014) and Finland (2011). This time they wish to explore the connection of visuals, dance and music with the means of hip hop culture in a million city like Rio with a vibrant hip hop scene.

Therefore, they developed the concept of “Rua 2016”, a sort of “anti-olympic games”, which aims to bring together a number of marginalized activities by the “olympic spirit”, such as skateboarding, parkour, breaking and MC battles. These activities will take place in the streets of Rio in the period before the official games. In the games from the early days, there was a wide range of activities, which included poetry reading, music and the participation of amateur competitors.

Next Sunday, 26, “Rua 2016” will finally take place – held in partnership with the I Love XV collective – at Praça XV de Novembro. Anyone can participate in the exhibitions of the activities (which were chosen by voting on the internet) between 1 and 6pm. This event will also bring DJs Kong, Alex Freeze, Tillo and Dziga. Come along!

More information

www.rua2016.info
www.facebook.com/ruario2016
instagram.com/rua2016

Pictures Gallery

Nancy Popp

13.04.2016 - 31.05.2016

Nancy Popp is a Los Angeles-born and -based artist, educator and organizer. Her work draws upon the rich traditions of durational, corporeal performance and political intervention to explore relations between body as site, the context of site that envelopes the body, and the constant fluctuations that connect the two. Her practice engages both architectural and public space to wrestle with political and social boundaries of geography and identity through risky, playful, endurance-based interventions. Her media also include photography, drawing, drawing and community organizing.

Nancy’s current focus is the economic and social problem of displacement, re-development and gentrification in municipalities world-wide. She is in Brazil to engage with anti-gentrification movements in response to the internationally-funded development fueled by the 2014 World Cup and upcoming Summer Olympic games. Her purpose is to learn from local community efforts resisting economic and cultural inequity, network similar efforts in Los Angeles and other cities, and realize how they might connect to form stronger communities of organized resistance.

Nancy’s work has been supported and exhibited by MOCA Los Angeles, the Getty Center, the 2011 Istanbul Biennial, the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, the 2014 Dallas Biennial, Rowan University, SUNY University, CSU Los Angeles, in addition to galleries and public spaces in Belgrade, Düsseldorf, Tijuana, and London. Recent residencies and fellowships include the 2011 California Community Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship and the Lucas Artist Fellowship from Montalvo Arts Center. She holds degrees from Art Center College of Design and San Francisco Art Institute and is represented by Klowden Mann Gallery, Los Angeles. She also writes for various magazines and websites on art, education and politics.

More information
http://www.nancypopp.com
http://klowdenmann.com/artist/nancy-popp/

Cleo Sanchez

01.04.2016 - 30.06.2016

Born in Spain, lives and works between Europe and the US. Cleo’s practice is mixed, passing through photography and installation. She has exhibited in France, England, Portugal and Germany.

For her three-month residence in Rio de Janeiro, Cleo intends to expand her aesthetic research involving physiology and gender and its socio-political impacts. The artist also intends to explore the reality of women and transgender people in contemporary Brazil.

More information: www.sanchezcleo.com

Pictures Gallery

Susan Leen

01.04.2016 - 30.04.2016

Place making and notions of identity related to space are themes Susan Leen interrogates in her artistic practice. Using cartographic language, the artist dismantles the systems used to present territories; through different political and objective trajectories, she aims to create a new vocabulary to express overlooked realities in different environments. This research takes form in paper based sculpture, installation, drawing and cut-out work. Her approach to abstraction through cartography aims to express the complexity of location in a tactile way. She privileges light, often delicate material to emphasize the fragile nature of the different systems in question, ecological or societal, and the inherent tensions contained within these spaces.

During her time in Rio de Janeiro, Susan will focus on local geographic identity and how this is complexly linked to social stratification. She’ll be examining local terrains looking at urban morphology and it’s effects on the social, cultural and political dramas of the city. The artist takes a poetic approach to exploring the wide ranging repercussions of colonialism and the formation of territories, investigating identity politics, architecture and distribution of resources using plastic forms. Her research focuses on the concept of resilience as a result of unease in a region and as a constant in human nature and territories worldwide. Considering all systems of life in a state of constant flux, resilience and process of ‘repair’. Susan will draw on the text ‘Pour Une Topologie Sociale’, by French architect and anthropologist Philippe Bonnin, looking at the role of space in our societies, how it reflects social facts and influences relations but also it’s psychological and emotional aspects.

Recent exhibitions:

Construct the Future, Hoxton Gallery, London, U.K., What if We Got it Wrong?, F.E. Mc William Gallery, Co.Down, U.K., Et si on s’etait trompe?, Irish Cultural Centre, Paris, France, Relational Geographies UAL Gallery, High Holborn, London, U.K., Ce n’est pas une heure pour les histoires de revenants, Rentrons! Villa Belleville, Paris, France, Young, SO Fine Art Editions, Dublin, IRL, Carnet de Reves III, Gallery Les Moulins, Ile-de-France, France , Describing Architecture: Work in Progress, The Octagonal Room, Dublin, IRL, Carnet de Reves II, Gallery Les Moulins, Ile-de-France, France, La Belevedere, Subjective Mapping, project installed in Belleville park, Paris, Describing Architecture: scale and medium, Architectural Association of Ireland, Dublin; Genius Loci, ‘Axa in Action’ AXA, Prague, Czech Republic. 

Recent residencies:

Joya Arte y Ecologia Residency, Andalucia, Spain.  2015: Food Water Life, winter residency at the Banff Centre, Alberta Canada. ,2013/5: Artist in Residence, La Forge, Belleville, under the direction of Point Ephemere