RIMA SATER  AND LAURA ACOSTA

FILM PHOTOGRAPHER AND GIF ANIMATOR– TRANSDISCIPLINARY ARTIST

July 2019

Colombia / Canada -  Lebanon / Canada

Rima Sater is a self-taught film photographer and GIF animator currently based in  Ontario, Canada.

Her work is motivated by shapes and forms that evolve through colour, emphasizing natural elements of the everyday, such as light, landscape, and   architecture. Rima often translates her work through a series of images, allowing for a narrative to build, showing a connection between them. This approach has inspired to experiment with motion, creating animations from original photographs through collage, and expanding her practice to motion picture through Super 8mm short films. Rima’s affinity or the natural can be seen throughout her personal and professional  work, as she continues to grow in her practice.

Laura Acosta is a Colombian-Canadian transdisciplinary artist that uses textiles and           performance as a way to observe the power that a body has to claim, create, alter, or disrupt spaces. Her work revolves around creating absurdist audio-visual compositions that integrate unscripted movement, textile structures, and multimedia elements, as a way to explore themes of identity, representation and belonging. Laura’s performances extend into practices of installation, public intervention, photography, video art, text, experimental sound, and workshops. She has completed a BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, and an MFA in fibres and material studies from Concordia University in Montreal, where she is currently the Head of Wardrobe of the Theatre Department.

During her residence, Rima and Laura worked in a collaborative project called ‘there is no honey without an onion’

Their collaborative practice revolved around combining Rima’s photography skills and particular affinity for landscapes – flora, fauna, mountains, oceans – with Laura’s textile and performance work.

During her stay, their wrote, developed and shot a Super 8mm short film using the natural settings on the island as backdrops for a performance with various textile pieces.

This was an incredible opportunity for Rima to develop her photography and filmmaking knowledge while Laura further explored techniques of movement and performance

HANNAH ERWIN – VISUAL ARTIST

July 2019

U.S.A.

Hannah Erwin is a visual artist based in Baltimore, Maryland whose primary focus is drawing.  Her work explores visions of sensuality and power in its many iterations.  Sometimes  subtle, sometimes painful, timeless in its grasp. 

Inspired by history and learning about the lives of people varied in nature, spread across time and space.  Within everyone are highly vivid, nuanced stories that can be broken down into archetypes, resplendent with inner pictures and characters known from long ago and deep inside. Her drawings are driven by the way people grow into these stories and become twisted in them.

During her stay, Hannah worked intensively in her drawings, allowing herself long hours in the studio, during the day and through the night, with full concentration and devoutness. Her commitment with her work was impressive: she finished on several drawing being the last one the longest and more detailed and meticulous, in which she worked for the last two weeks of residence. Her profound dedication and discipline were remarkable. On top of all the work done in her time, she also enjoyed waterfall trails, community visits and joined every discussion at the house with the rest of the participants.

www.silklilies.net

ROWAN BATHURST - PAINTER, SCULPTOR AND TEXTILE ARTIST

July 2019 

U.S.A.

Rowan Bathurst (b. 1995 Baltimore, Maryland) is a painter, sculptor and textile artist currently living in Baltimore. She graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2018 after transferring from a local community college.

Rowan has been an interdisciplinary artist, recently working in mediums such as ceramics, fiber, found objects, and screen printing, despite her background as an oil painter. 

Her 2-Dimensional work revolves around mathematics, quantum physics and their relativity to our subconscious dreams. Rowan's sculptural work talks about a primitive state of the brain, ego and violence in our everyday reality - how we cope and address the dark sides of human nature. 

During her stay Rowan not only  worked daily on her paintings, but she also dedicated time to her photography as well as getting excited with a sculpture garment project with natural found materials. 

www.rowanbathurst.com

ALEX MC KAY – VISUAL ART

Ireland/United Kingdom

July 2019

Alex is an emerging artist, working and living in London UK. He is currently enrolled on a foundation programme in fine art, and hopes to start a BA next year. He is a medical doctor, teaches, and has a strong interest in the value fine art can bring to conversations around wellbeing, authentic communication and understanding the human story. He has taken 3 months off work this summer to travel, have time to reflect and to encourage personal artistic development.

LESLIE SCOTT – DANCER

U.S.A

May 2019

Leslie scott is a researcher of movement in the studio, classroom, screen, sidewalk, and dining room.

She is the founder and Artistic Director of BODYART — a multimedia contemporary dance theatre company. Scott regularly combines her decades of experience in producing and non-profit development for her multiple teaching and consulting activities across the globe. Connecting her movement research to the for-profit sector, Scott has consulted with notable restaurants and corporations on body language and movement branding.

As a choreographer, working in both traditional and non-traditional spaces, her work has been performed in notable venues and sites from LA, NYC, Dallas, St. Louis, New Orleans, Houston, Edinburgh, and New Zealand. Since 2006 she has created six evening-length works, 27 shorter mixed-bill works and over 30 commissions to some of the country’s leading institutions.

Focusing on the intersection of movement and technology in both her performances and teaching, Scott is an Assistant Professor of Dance and New Media at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. Scott created The Decay Project (TDP), a dance film residency program focusing on beauty in nontraditional spaces, that partners with local communities worldwide. Recently TDP completed its fourth International collaboration in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia following successful programs in Christchurch New Zealand. Her films have been screened at Portland Dance Film Festival, Tiny Dance, London International Film Festival and Screen Dance International.

As an artist mentor, Scott has been an educator at the Center for Cultural Innovation in Los Angeles, teaching Creative Entrepreneurship, marketing and branding workshops. She served on the California Institute of the Arts HIVE incubator program as a panelist and mentor and served as a leader for Queen’s Arts Council’s LEAP program. As a funding consultant Scott has advised and written multiple successful grant applications for artists to the New England Foundation of the Arts. Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, California Arts Council, Queens Arts Council and the Ford Foundation.

Producing Internationally, Scott has organized festivals across the globe for more than ten years. From Edinburgh to Los Angeles, New York and New Orleans, she enjoys bringing a curated group of artists to new communities to forge new relationships and community connections. 

Ms Scott is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at Tulane University in New Orleans, USA. She holds an MFA in Choreography from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in Modern Dance with an emphasis in photography from Texas Christian University. She is also a certified sommelier and enjoys incorporating all five senses into her choreographic projects.

During her time in residence, Leslie worked developing new choreographies and editing films and videos on past performances. She also started to work on a new project about movement. Using a very light an unexpected element, such as a rescue blanket, she worked with it in natural sceneries playing with the environment, air, water, wind, sea collaborating with another resident who she directed to perform dance moves. Leslie documented this process trough photographs and videos. 

JADE TACHIE-MENSON - MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST

Ghana

March 2019

Jade Tachie-Menson (b. 1994 Milton Keynes, UK) is a multidisciplinary artist currently living in Accra, Ghana. Her art practice has grown out of a desire to experiment with many materials including painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, textiles, photography, digital art and text.

Born to Ghanaian parents and spent most of her life in between England, Ghana, South Africa and Canada. She is no stranger to travel and believes it’s essential to grow, learn and love through a multitude of perspectives.

Art has always been a means to communicate and express her thoughts and desires. Her work is a reflection of the ‘hybrid identity’ she’s come to accept. Exploring themes of identity and displacement she aims to challenge perception and negate expectation.

In 2017, she received her BFA and Minor in Art History from the University of British Columbia.

She has participated in several group exhibitions in Vancouver and Ottawa and her work in print media has awarded her the Marijke Nap Memorial Prize in 2017.

During her time in residence, Jade worked intensely in commissioned pieces as well as writing, reading and exploring the island  through long walks by the beach.

Instagram: @jrtmenson

HILLARY OLSON | FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHER / INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST

U.S.A.

February and March 2019 

Hillary Olson is an interdisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota with a primary focus in fine art photography. 

Before pursuing self-employment in 2018, Hillary was the Marketing Manager for Brave New Workshop Comedy Theatre in Minneapolis, MN. She has her B.A. in Studio Art (painting) and Theatre Arts (performance) from Hamline University. Prior to Hamline, Hillary studied commercial photography, film photography & graphic design at Central Campus in Des Moines, IA.

Theatre arts and dance were some of Hillary's first introductions to creative collaboration and continue to greatly influence her work. Her experience with improvisational and site-specific movement allow her to create dynamic relationships between the body and its environment. In her collaborative work, Hillary aims to create and hold save spaces for individuals to find strength through vulnerability, and creative exploration through conscious collaboration.

Hillary began life modeling for painting and drawing classrooms starting in 2013 and began modeling for the camera through self-portraiture. Her self-portraits continue to be a large part of her creative habit,  allowing  her to explore the multiplicities of self,  through physical expression, performance and creative installation.

She recently was hosted at the Mudhouse Artist Residency in Agios Ioannis, Greece, where she created and showcased self-portraits in the historic Cretan village. Hillary's photographs were also shown at Black Magik Women III (2017) and The Palimpsest Project Showcase (2017) in collaboration with figure drawing artist, Loren Hextall. Her photography was published in the March, 2018 issue of Maiden's Magazine.

When she isn't around the camera, Hillary can be found performing in Minneapolis theatre, growing her skills in the aerial arts (silks), traveling, and gardening. 

SIDNEY SPIEGEL - DANCER

USA - Israel

May 2019

Sidney Spiegel is a dancer, choreographer and teaching artist from San Francisco, CA. After completing a BA in Dance from the University of California, Riverside, Sidney continued her training at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Upon returning to San Francisco, Sidney began working as a theatre choreographer, and performing with various contemporary dance companies as well as theatre companies around the Bay Area.  

After traveling for six months trough Brazil, Sidney took her time in Casa Na Ilha as a moment to get back into making her own work again and  in researching how to use captivating and relatable story telling in dance. She performed each morning gaga dance, both in the studio as in our terrace. Mirrors are avoided in Gaga training to facilitate movement guided by sensing and imagining rather than sight. She also developed a short film with her dance, using the soundscapes of the island and environment.

She also collaborated with another resident, Leslie Scott, dancing under her direction for a project on movement.

ELAINE PAWLOWICZ - PAINTER

U.S.A 

June  2019

Elaine received her Masters in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993. She is currently an Associate Professor in Art at the University of North Texas. She has a family consisting of 2 daughters, husband and three dogs. She has attended many residencies in rural areas including Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Wyoming, Montana and Kentucky.

These intensive and spiritual residence has improved her painting sensibilities and simultaneously gained a global perspective

Her work consisted in doing small plein air painting and then reinterpreting her observational ideas with graphic images of geology, astrology, flora and fauna, and weather phenomena. She would  include parts of my own neighborhood into this magical mix. She  aimed  to create mystical narratives while she was inhabiting this remote, pristine environment. She was interested in visually describing two chapters in the book Poetics of Space written by Gaston Bachelard on “House and Universe” and “Infinite Immensity”.

This was Elaine first time in South America and she  experienced the purity of the Parque Estadual de Ilhabela, a Unesco-protected biosphere. She was inspired by the wealth of new imagery she explored regarding vegetation and fauna including the rain forests, ocean, exotic birds and mammals.   

http://www.faultywire.com/

FELICIE KERTUDO- RESEARCHER // VISUAL ARTIST

France/UK 

January 2019

Félicie Kertudo (FR) is a MRes Arts & Humanities student with a history and political sciences background. For the past few months, she has been exploring the dynamics of Women-Only spaces through a Watery (auto)ethnographic case study of the Kenwood Ladies Pond, Hampstead Heath, London. Using her own Skin as a key interface between her Body and its natural surroundings throughout the research journey, Kertudo calls for a better representation of the diversity of bodily subjectivities. Notably using curatorial research methods and embracing the concept of ‘embodiment’ through the making of site-specific art installations, her aim is to make more understandable and visible the process behind her research practice. She is focusing on key philosophical theories such as ‘Ecofeminism’, ‘Hydrofeminism’ and ‘Phenomenology’, which hold a strong disruptive potential by calling into question the neoliberal, patriarchal and self-destructive societal and normative system that continues to prevail in the Western world in the 21st century.

MOUNA ACHAK – CONCEPTUAL ARTIST

Belgium

February 2019 

Mouna Achak , born in 1991, is a conceptual artist graduated in 2017 from the Willem de Kooning academy in a Bachelor of Arts and currently based in Antwerp, Belgium. Born in the western world being raised by Moroccan parents made her realize that there is a necessity to create a new combined universal language through art. In her artwork she conceptualize the underlying layers of the human subconsciousness and how she can transmute them by the help of textures, colors, prints and patterns. For her, art is a tool to research and release the inner structures and patterns to create a new symbolic language that universally appeals to our subconsciousness.

www.mounlife.com

instagram: mounlife  

MARY MODEEN – INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST

Scotland

January 2019

Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies, is an artist/academic, who lectures in Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, Scotland. She is the founder and Course Director of the Masters of Fine Art in Art & Humanities in Dundee, and also led the undergraduate Art, Philosophy and Contemporary Practices course for seven years previously. Modeen supervises PhD students and is the Associate Dean for Internationalisation. Her mother was of Fond du Lac Ojibwe ancestry and her father was first generation with Scandinavian parents. Modeen lectured for several years at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire before moving to Scotland. Her work has several threads: perception as a cognitive and interpretive process, memory studies, and place-based research, which connects many of these concerns with attention to cultural values, history and embodied experience. As such, this research is usually interdisciplinary. Part of this work appears as creative art, usually with an origin in printmaking, and part as writing and presentations. She addresses aspects of seeing that go beyond the visible, questioning what we know as sentient humans. Cultural values and individual differences are inherent in these investigations. Her long-standing interests in poetry and modern literature also inform her work.

During her time in residence, Mary worked side by side with Christine Baumler, also an academic, on a reasearch on Sustainability. This work took them both to work closely with the native community, immersing in the village on the other side of the island, only reachable by boat, where they stay for some time to talk and share their way of living. They also developed a close relationship with fisherman, visited and interview enviromentally related NGO as well as a 'Sitio' located in the south of the island, a place where they cultivate everything they eat and only build with bio architecture (only mud and found materials) who has been running for 45 years. They will process all this work in the studio and will be publishing a report with the support of their universities.

CHRISTINE BAEUMLER - INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST

U.S.A

January 2019

Christine Baeumler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota in the Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice area. Her artwork explores the potential of art as a catalyst to increase awareness about environmental issues and to facilitate stewardship. Christine’s ancestry includes recent immigrants to the US from Sweden and Germany. She is about to attend a workshop in Sweden about the practice of  Northern European Shamanism.  Her studio work includes painting and  installation, based largely on travel to World Heritage sites including  the Australian and Amazon rainforests, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Galapagos Islands. Baeumler’s community-based environmental art practice is collaborative and involves the ecological and aesthetic transformation of urban sites with attention to increasing biodiversity, improving water quality, providing habitat and engaging with youth on issues of sustainability. Recent collaborative art and science projects include the Rooftop Tamarack Bog at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Bogs, A Love Story documentary,  the Pollinator Garden and Buzz Lab at the Plains Art Museum in North Dakota, Backyard Phenology Mobile Lab, and the Pollinator Skyrise, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. 

During her time in residence, Christine worked side by side with  Mary Modeen, also an academic, on a reasearch on Sustainability. This work took them both to work closely with the native community, immersing in the village on the other side of the island, only reachable by boat, where they stay for some time to talk and share their way of living. They also developed a close relationship with fisherman, visited and interview enviromentally related NGO as well as a 'Sitio' located in the south of the island, a place where they cultivate everything they eat and only build with bio architecture (only mud and found materials) who has been running for 45 years. They will process all this work in the studio and will be publishing a report with the support of their universities.

FELICIA LEACH – VISUAL ARTIST

U.S.A

March 2019

“The challenging and exciting aspects of this residency in Casa Na Ilha is how the presence of the land is preserved in constant flux and how those experiential forces effect people. I am extremely interested in the reality and the metaphor of the fluidity of the land and the sea. The lines, patterns, and evolving surfaces transformed by natural and human forces strike a chord within my work with as cartographic reference in the plein air process.  This residency in Brazil added to my previous body of work from residencies in the Shenandoah National Park (USA), Léhon in Brittany, (FR) and the Lincoln Center at Julliard (NYC) and it continued the goals of exploring new landscapes and the creation of their images as tethered to time and presence.”

During her time in residence, Felicia developed a series of painting based on shripwrecks and the ocean. She investigated many of the legends as well as the history of each of the shrips that wrecked around the island, each one, each story, turned in a sketch an a painting. She also explored the island villages, beaches and waterfalls as well as spend her time dicing in reading.

Based and raised in central Missouri, Felicia Leach (b.1977 Fayette, MO) graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Southern Illinois University- Carbondale with her B.F.A. and M.F.A. respectively focusing primarily in painting and printmaking mediums. She has had opportunities to work with many creative groups such as the Citizen Jane film festival, the True/ False film festival, Detroit Contemporary, and the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Her practice retains immediacy through exhibitions nationally and internationally. Advancements in her work have been strengthened through the residencies at the Shenandoah National Park, MICA Artist Residency in Brittany, France and the Lincoln Education Center at The Juilliard School in NYC.  Through these outlets, she has pursued interests in making site-specific prints, drawings, and paintings based in the investigation of time as tethered to place. Currently, she works as an artist-educator at Moberly Area Community College teaching foundational design, drawing, and painting. 

MARIANNA STAROSELSKY - PLAYWRITER

U.S.A

December/January 2019

Marianna Staroselsky (MFA in Theatre - Playwriting, '19, Columbia School of the Arts, Doctoral Candidate - Comparative Human Development, '19, University of Chicago) writes, studies, teaches, and makes art about identity and the strangeness of being a person in modern society in its myriad layers of experience. She emigrated from the Soviet Union to Des Moines, Iowa when she was a kid and has lived in six different countries since. Marianna fell in love with playwriting as a result of an OkCupid Date. Her full-length plays to date include "Cry Baby Meets Audrey Hepburn,"(20% Theatre Company, Cornservatory, Tikkun Fellowship, 2016,) "100 Awkward Ways to Be a Person" (Columbia University School of the Arts, La MaMa, 2017-18) and "How I Married Myself and Other Misadventures," (The New Colony, Athena Theatre Company, Columbia University School of the Arts, 2015-18.) She is writing a new opera called “Simulacrum” going up in early June at 3LD with PATH New Music Theatre in NYC.

Marianna stayed in the house outside the residence program, due to her tight schedule, she decided to come an take this time working on her own on a playscript to be presented and shown in NYC. She dedicated her time to read, write and explore the island.

ANA DRUCKER  - VISUAL ARTIST 

Mexico

March 2019

Ana is a Mexican artist currently living in Barcelona. She has been living in Europe for 5 years and this experience has let her grow my interest for her Latin roots. She wants to meet, connect and collaborate with people, see a completely different side of the world, a world she haven’t been used to lately. She wants to connect with nature and be away from the big cities she has been living her whole life. 

The project  Ana developed during her stay in Casa Na Ilha was about color. ‘I’ve had a huge obsession with color my entire life, and it’s been one of the main components in my work.’ She  worked on  a strong research on the perception and relation between form and color, and how this transform our perception of the visible world. She thinks that the place at Casa Na Ilha will suited perfectly. ‘Nature is the richest in color but also because color is related to feeling and sensations, and was able to discover new senses/colors.’ She also developed a graphic project, based in painting,  digital manipulation and printing techniques. Her idea was to create a collection of experiments on color and how color can transform and blend depending on what other element is accompanying. 

She focus her work on visual experimentation, fascinated by texture and color, interested in raw material and the possibilities that range between the analog and the digital. When she decided she wanted to study art, she started working as an assistant for a ceramic workshop for Fundación Sebastián in Mexico City, then she  decided to move to Barcelona, where she started working in a digital arts and music festival called MIRA.  Now she is  the visual curator for the festival, which has let her work with some  of the best artists of contemporary electronic music and digital and  arts.  She also works as a graphic designer for a company named OPTIMUS. As a freelance artist she does  album covers for musicians.  

http://www.anadrucker.net/  

JINMI IN  - FILM MAKER

South Korea

December/January 2019

Jinmi In, entered the commercial film industry as a scripter of <Two Cops 2> in 1996, and then participated some films, <Scent of a Man> as an assistant art director, <Baby Sale><Film-making> as a directive session, <Lies><Resurrection Of The Little Match Girl> as an assistant director and scnario, and an independent feature film, ‘Wealth and Honor’ as a main director.

She also work with a lot of media art work, not just movies, she selected as a visual arts support of the Incheon Cultural Properties and held <SIMULACRUM Individual (Dec.3-10)> in the Incheon Art Platform 6 in 2015, and with the support of the Korea Mecenat Association, she completed the Daewon Art Exhibition, which includes installations of <‘Ddeummo in Nakwon‘ (December 22nd to 26th), video, sound, music and performances at the Nak Won Musical Instrument center in Jongno-gu, Seoul.

Afterwards, Jinmi In, who was preparing to enter a commercial movie based on fantasy material, became interested in VR films. In 2017, Jinmi In produced two short VR films through VR short film production education in the Korean Academy of Film Arts 2017.

During her time in residence, Jinmi worked on short  films and 360 videos, recording the changins skyes, clouds, weather and local life for an upcomining documentary, Her intention is  to show one world, how we are all part of the same, not matter where we are. She has been collecting images as well as sounds around different locations worldwide. 

And, she would also enjoyed cooking korean food for the rest of the group!

MELISSA EDER – VISUAL ARTIST

U.S.A

December/January 2019

Melissa Eder received her B.F.A. in painting from Parsons School of Design in New York City where she studied with Sean Scully and a M.F.A. in combined media from Hunter College in New York City where she studied with Robert Morris and received a Meritorious Award from the Alumni Association. As a visual artist, her work has been shown nationally and internationally in such venues as the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York University’s Broadway Windows Gallery, Art in General, the Aperture Foundation, the Humble Arts Foundation, the Whitney Houston Biennial, the Parlor Gallery, the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Charlotte Street Foundation’s Paragraph Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri and in Berlin, London and Korea. She was an artist-in-residence at the Henry Street Settlement in New York City, the Saltonstall Foundation in Ithaca, New York and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida as selected by photographer Graciela Iturbide. In 2011, her work was selected by Eric C. Shiner, the former director of the Andy Warhol Museum for his curated exhibit on CurateNYC. During the summer of 2014, her work was included in the Aperture Foundation’s Summer Open and was chosen from over 860 applicants. She was selected to design a piano for the public art project for Sing for Hope, and it was displayed at Lincoln Center. She has received numerous grants including funding from the Puffin Foundation and two Manhattan Community Arts Fund grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has been reviewed by the New York Times, highlighted in Feature Shoot, Co Design, the Huffington Post, the Collector Daily and various other publications. Recently, she participated in the Satellite Art Show during Art Basel Miami 2016. She lives in New York City and works in Brooklyn as an artist in residence through the chashama studio residency. She was born in Long Branch, New Jersey.  

During her time in residence Melissa worked in a series called ‘Tropicalisimo’. She worked with natural landscapes and views from the house as well as souveniers, fabrics and found materials to create images and scenarios, combining still with natural life.

She would photograph them, over exposing colors and light.

After this process, she printed the images in larger vinyl banners and presented this ones in several exhibitions.

ÉRICA MUKAI FARIA – HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY – TAILOR

U.S.A – BRAZIL

NOVEMBER 2019

Érica Mukai Faria, known by many as “Quinha,” is a Brazilian-American interdisciplinary artist who explores the concepts of hope, value, and eternity. By employing the metaphor of the human body as fragile yet resilient packaging, her creative practice is informed by her work as an Emergency Room nurse and Tailor's apprentice. Quinha is the Creative Director of Philadelphia Packaging Company, an artists collaborative based in the USA that selectively distributes a print magazine to various parts of the world. During her stay,

Erika worked with a series experimenting with a new style and abstract painting.

Follow @philadelphiapackagingcompany for details.

www.ericamukaifaria.com

instagram: @ quinha.etc

SIMONE VARANO – SINGER, SONGWRITER, FILMMAKER AND ACTIVIST

U.S.A.

FEBRUARY 2020 

My name is Simone Varano (aka Cöco Mamba) and I'm a singer, song writer, filmmaker and activist based in Brooklyn, NY. I started my career in documentary filmmaking in 2013 with a DIY web series titled Hour by Hour. The series was a POV perspective of the day-to-day events and activities I participated in as a young creative living in NYC. The series made  small waves, appearing in blogs such as Afropunk and Blavity. I continued working in film after I graduated from Parsons the New School for Design in 2014 with a BBA in Strategic Design and Management. Immediately after graduation, the death of Mike Brown and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement prompted me to start documenting the events surrounding the movement. In 2014 I travelled to Ferguson, MO with the director and DP of what would later become Whose Streets. Following our stay, I assisted with the edit of the documentary feature film until it's Sundance premiere in 2017. 

I continued to work in social justice, traveling to Baltimore, MD after the death of Freddie Gray to document the protests there, and helping to organize and document the NYC Millions March here in NYC. After returning to the New School to study for a Masters Certificate in Media Management in 2015, I realized that I could no longer ignore my desire to create music and decided to combine it with my love of filmmaking. In 2016 I released my first single "Humble Yourself" and the positive feedback I received encouraged me to keep going. I released a few other singles and visuals that year and made small waves here and there. During my stay in Park City, UT during the premiere of Whose Streets, I wrote, recorded, and shot a femme-positive cover to Migos' "Bad and Boujee" in the house the festival provided. The video was released on Valentines Day of that year and made small waves initially. On March 22nd 2018 I had my first show, opening up for my friend's punk band "The Meltaways". A member of the audience happened to be roommates with a writer at The FADER, who showed my "Bad and Boujee" song to the editor-in-chief at the time, and I woke up the next day to my first FADER feature. 

I continue to do work in film, working as a freelance video editor for companies such as Amazon, Youtube, and Forbes. I use my freelance work to fund my music career independently. I also produce, conceptualize, and edit each and every one of my music videos (as seen in Okayplayer, Revolt TV, Earmilk). Both my music and visuals are directly inspired by my environment and current emotions,

During her stay in residence, Simone worked on her music, shoot videos and wrote new songs.

You can check her work https://www.dinnerland.tv/rumandcoke

and on her Instagram @cocomamba

STEFANIE JORDAN  -  VISUAL ARTIST, FILMMAKER, ANIMATOR, ILLUSTRATOR, LECTURER AND COMIC ARTIST

Germany

I am a visual artist, filmmaker, illustrator, lecturer and comic artist based in Berlin, Germany.

I have made animated films as well as feature-length documentaries for over twenty years: writing, directing, producing and doing camerawork both in Germany and in the US.

In the past few years I have been gravitating towards more illustrative work including comics and graphic narration.

In my animation practice as well as in my comics work, I appreciate the value of meaning behind each image, but also the innate significance of the space between panels, which is frequently where the real story is told, made manifest in the minds of reader, spectator and audience. I love this alchemy - the interactive process of creating dimensions of time through narrative.

I am particularly interested in hybrid categories such as comic-poertry and reportage as well as documentary animation: there is an implicit contradiction to these genres which I find very compelling.

The subjective and emotional qualities of the drawn or painted image lend themselves particularly well to documentation, acting as „a creative treatment of actuality “.

During this residency shewas  inspired by daily experiences and impressions during my stay. being touched by landscape, ocean, colours, sounds, smells, and people – that inevitable creative atmosphere which is built through artists’ explorations.

instagram: stefaniejordan11

NIKOLA HOFFMANN – VISUAL ARTIST

Germany

FEBRUARY 2020

Nikola Hoffmann is a Visual Artist, based in Cologne, Germany.

Her work is mainly inspired by botanicals, atmospheric phenomenons and human beings.

Her work plays with the contrast between emotions of the perceived reality and the abstraction of cosmic spheres.

She likes to experiment with different kinds of materials - mainly ink and acrylics - and as well with different techniques. Lately she found her passion for the art of printing, which brings new aspects of coincidence and unpredictability into her work.

The importance of social and sustainable responsibility is becoming more and more focus in her daily life, and so is in her way of working.

During her stay at Casa Na Ilha she wanted to bring awareness to this topic by making natural dyes and inks by using materials from the island such as leaves, flowers and roots.  

The colours therefore represent the life on this planet. How are we gonna save the earth from losing its colours?

She worked experimenting with natural pigments from flowers and seed, cataloguing them and documenting the process. She also work with prints

       MAHAM MALIK – VISUAL/MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST

Pakistan/Canada 

AUGUST 2019

Maham’s work is inspired by the relationship between identity and space, she works in the intersection of art and social justice, exploring the transformative ability of art to imagine and express identity beyond certainties. She is co-founder of The Dabke Collective, an artistic movement geared towards activism through participatory, collaborative art and story-telling. It seeks to create spaces for the repossession of silenced voices, unheard stories and alternative realities. The projects are meant to foster a collective imagination that allows us to think outside of the binary of ‘us’ and the ‘other’, and instead engage in dialogue which connects us. She works as a lead conceptual artist and has co-curated several multi-disciplinary arts exhibits starting with their first project “In Search on Lines”. As a visual artist she explores personal narratives, her paintings and illustrations are a necessary means for her to connect with ideas of rootedness, ancestry and politics of identity. Currently she is working as lead conceptual artist on Soundtography, an auditory exploration of journeys of migration and displacement of a group of 12 self-identified womxn artists from diverse backgrounds. The project is providing a space for exploration and creation as these womxn go through a series of 12 workshops (from April 13 to June 29), gaining both technical abilities to understand, record, and create sound narratives as well as exploring the emotional and physical landscapes of their journeys with various facilitators. Soundtography will eventually exhibit the 12 sounds maps which speak to each womxn’s journey in an immersive sound exhibit at the end of the year. She has also been involved in designing interventions through social programming in Pakistan and Toronto. 

During her stay, Maham worked with different series of painting, inspired by trips and explorations in the island.

Maham's Reflection on her stay  "Jungle mein Mangal I & II. An ode to the women who embrace the chaotic, tangled, wild mess that is this world. And breathe into it alternative realities so that we may be able beauty and synchronicity too. This was an important piece because it came after a long time of being stuck creatively. Forever grateful to the beautiful space Marina created at @casanailhaart residency. And the island that still feels like a dreaamms "

SUSAN DE CASTRO – VISUAL ARTIST

U.S.A.

AUGUST 2019

Susan is a  full time professor and Program Coordinator of Digital Multimedia Design, and Fine Arts, in Touro College, New York, since 1996. Previous to this position, she taught art in public schools. She has a BFA from the Tyler School of Art/Temple University, and received an MA degree from New York University. She regularly exhibits in group shows in New York City with the National Association of Women Artists, and the Art Student’s League of New York.

Her landscape/cityscape work focuses on personal experiences she has during travels, both locally and abroad. She aims to convey a “moment” in the experience; whether its walking on a foreign street, or in her home town of New York. She looks to express a feeling of anonymity, which explains why some of her paintings have minimal figures and unrecognizable faces. She likes to combine nature with structural space. Also, she chooses a similar vantage point, in terms of one point perspective, to portray a feeling of wonder, as to “what’s down the road”- a metaphor for her life, generally speaking.

Her still life paintings focus on color, contrast and interactions with natural light. She enjoys working from nature and objects, and love to play with the endless possibilities of color and light. Her portraits also play with color and light; aiming to capture the model’s expression.

During her stay in Casa Na Ilha, she persisted in capturing , people, nature, and objects on the island and within the house, to further expand on current themes of her work.

MILES BROKENSHIRE – VISUAL ARTIST

Canada

NOVEMBER 2019

Miles Brokenshire is a visual artist currently living in Toronto. He specializes in large format photography and capturing the performing arts. His view on the inherent spontaneity of movement blends into the nature of our surroundings, whether man-made or natural. What is often left behind in nature ends up becoming the lone dancer in the wind, in a constant state of change. We live in the moment of our contemporary existence.

During his time in residende, Miles took long walks and trails in order to capture those details, things, houses, that cuaght his eye with his camera, working on a series of photos.

ALEJANDRA VARELA PERERA - PAINTER

Mexico

NOVEMBER 2019

"The notion that colour is bound up with the fate within Western culture sounds odd, and not very likely to be true. This is what I want to argue: that colour has been the object of extreme prejudice in Western culture. For the most part, this prejudice has remained unchecked and has passed unnoticed and yet it is a prejudice that is so all-embracing and generalized that, at one time or another, it has enrolled just about every other prejudice in its service. If its object were a furry animal, it would be protected by international law. But its object is, it is said, almost nothing, even though it is at the same time a part of almost everything and exists almost everywhere. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that, in the West, since Antiquity, colour has been systematically marginalised, reviled, diminished and degraded. Generations of philosophers, artists, art historians and cultural theorists of one stripeor another have kept this prejudice alive, warm, fed and groomed. As with all prejudices, its manifest form, it’s loathing, masks a fear: a fear of contamination and corruption by something that is unknown or appears unknowable. This loathing of colour, this fear of corruption through colour, needs a name: chromophobia.” 

An extract of the book Chromophobia written by David Batchlor
So when I talk about color I talk about the aforementioned. I need color,because in my life and in my world I see color. When I arrived to Italy I noticed how proudly my Italian friends talked about their art, talked about the “great ones” Michelangelo, Da vinci, Caravaggio and all the others. But I notice that when I talked about those artists which I consider to be the “great ones” they seemed to looked pale in comparison with the Italian artists. 

I started painting the only way I knew: with a lot of color. People would tell me “you are so Mexican, so colorful, so happy” they would say that my paintings had a lot “feelings” as if they weren’t taking it seriously, as if I was child that enjoyed color and my paintings were nothing more than cute and nice pairings of colors, we never talked about my “ability” to paint.

At the university one of my classes consisted in presenting new material in front of the class so a de- bate could be created.
I presented a portrait of a women in a red dress with plants as background titled “Josefa” the feedback was that I should try and paint more “Mexican” that maybe I could try a more “political” approach, that I should use even more color, they told me I seemed confused. What happened in my opinion was that they weren’t talking about my painting, they were talking about me, about how they expected me to be, about how they expected me to paint.