Results of the Open Call for Residencies in Switzerland

In August 2018, Coincidencia launched an open call for South American artists for three artistic residencies in Switzerland – Utopiana, La Becque and Residency.ch. After months of evaluation process, we are pleased to announce the selected artists!

A total of 463 applications were received from 10 different countries in South America. The call announced residencies to be held only in 2019. However, in view of the impressive number and strength of the applying artists, Coincidencia chose to double the number of winners and extend the period of residencies until the end of 2020.

The selection process was composed of two main stages. For the first stage, we invited curators from four different countries in South America: Adriana Piñeda (Colombia), Clarissa Diniz (Brazil), Lucrecia Palacios (Argentina) and Natasha Ponce (Chile). In this phase, all the applications were analyzed and the material of approximately 15 artists or artistic collectives for each of the three residencies was shortlisted. Dossiers of the pre-selected artists were sent to Utopiana, La Becque and Residency.ch, that took the responsibility for the final selection of their future guests.

Congratulations to the selected artists: Katherinne Fiedler (Peru), Maura Grimaldi (Brazil), the duo David Quiroga & Lina Mazenett (Colombia), Francisco Navarrete Sitja (Chile), Ismael Monticelli (Brazil), Monica Naranjo Uribe (Colombia), Agustina Muñoz (Argentina), Jimena Croceri (Argentina), Aline Motta (Brazil) and Andrea Ferrero (Peru).

 

Learn more about each artist, divided by residency:

Utopiana 2019

Katherinne Fiedler (Peru, 1982) has been focusing her work on exploring notions related to the landscape and nature in relation to political, poetic, and social construction issues, investigating the power and possibilities of natural contexts and elements in order to raise global questions and reflections. The landscape, the territory, and the representation of nature in relation to political, poetic and social construction factors from a nostalgic approach, are the guidelines where her work resides, drawing bridges between individual and the collective memory.

 

Utopiana 2020

Maura Grimaldi (Brazil, 1988) works as an artist and researcher. Her practice can be analyzed from three main general points, as she explains: «the image as a magical and revelatory experience; its ontology; and the technical devices and processes that are involved in its conception, production and reproduction». Maura’s interest lies in subjects like phantasmagoria, the invisible, the already obsolete photographic technologies, and devices related to the immersive experience of images’ contemplation. Through her recent experiments with 16mm films, she is also taking into consideration themes such as telepathy, possession, influence, hypnosis, dispersion, non-vigilance/non-wakefulness to think about other relations of body and perception.

Lina Mazenett & David Quiroga (Colombia, 1989 & 1985) are an artist duo exploring the interrelationship between organisms and the misnamed «resources» of the environment, and their distribution and resignification through culture. They strive to blur the distinction between the concepts of nature and culture through practices that oscillate between past and present, science and mythology, Amerindian cultures and Western influence. Their work includes installations, photography, sculpture and interventions.

 

La Becque in 2019

Francisco Navarrete Sitja (Chile, 1986) is a scholarship student in the Independent Studies Program, PEI, at the MACBA, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, in Spain. His aesthetic practices investigate the processes of configuration, hegemonic representation and affective implication to what is called nature, territory, materiality and identity, with decolonial and posthuman approaches, through the diverse expressive possibilities that the images, diagrams, archives, literature and sounds allow him.

Ismael Monticelli (Brazil, 1987) is an artist and researcher currently participating in the ArtSonica Residency with a research about the history of Morro do Castelo – a hill that was the starting point of the city of Rio de Janeiro and that was eliminated from the landscape in the early twentieth century. Monticelli’s work seeks to present spaces, objects, materials and narratives in other ways, revealing what is not noticed or easily seen, trying to weave other relations between appearance and reality. Such experiments have generated propositions in various media, such as objects, installations, photographs and videos.

 

La Becque in 2020

Mónica Naranjo Uribe (Colombia, 1980) combines different mediums, like drawing, video, photography and sculpture, to explore ways of creating narratives in space that can immerse the viewer in an atmosphere of fictional landscapes. In recent years, she became interested in geology as a way to think about territories from a neutral ground and a physical way, beyond human time scale. In her own words: «I find great poetical potential in the descriptions made by science. They become almost fictional stories of the natural world that, paradoxically, help us to better understand it». Nowadays, her geological oriented research focuses on exploring caves. She is also the founder and editor of Nomada Ediciones.

Agustina Muñoz (Argentina, 1985) works in performance and films. Working with the concepts of group and individuality, intimacy and collectiveness, Muñoz makes solo performances as well as collective pieces, in which bodies and voices are a compound of timelines and heritages. Talking about her current research, she says: «I am reading journals and personal letters from European women living in Argentina in the late XIX and early XX centuries. There is something in the way they describe nature that is irresistible for me. But they also describe <the others>: the indigenous, who represent danger, the forbidden, the scary and the wild. Studying indigenous languages, I found that in many of them, things and people do not are, but they seem: <That seems as a tree>, <He seems as Pedro>. There is something in that <seems like> that triggers me.»

 

Recidency.ch 2019

Jimena Croceri (Argentina, 1981) has worked with a variety of mediums, including sculpture, performance, sounds and installation. Her artistic practice is characterized by intention and experiment, by resistance and fluidness, consisting of various elements which are all protagonists: time, chance, collaboration, correlation and coincidence. A large part of her work is based on producing collective knowledge with others around her as part of an experimental laboratory format. In 2018, she started a working cycle with Swiss artist Sarina Scheidegger called «Nosotrxs, cuerpos de agua» (Us, Bodies of Water), where they have developed the subject of water and its relation to bodies, (hydro)feminism, nature and politics.

 

Recidency.ch 2020

Aline Motta (Brazil, 1974) combines different techniques and artistic practices, merging photography, video, installation, sound art, collage, and textile materials. By delving into her own family history, her research seeks to reveal other corporalities, resignify memories and elaborate other forms of existence. Drawing from personal experiences, Aline’s work aims to discuss larger issues like racism, usual forms of representation, the notion of belonging and identity in a society that is still trying to come to terms with its violent History and the romanticized notions of its praised upon miscegenation.

Andrea Ferrero (Peru, 1991) works with architecture as a tool to rupture the collective memory and question the basis of the political power, playing with notions of possibility and counter-memory. Her practice considers envisioned or built spaces, interpreting architecture as a reflection of the society it hosts, and examining the ways in which architecture and urban planning affect the dynamics of the city and vice versa. She is concerned not only with remembering, but also – and, perhaps, most importantly – with forgetting. These ideas are often materialized through architectural castings, 1:1 replicas of building contours, and representations of imagined constructions of <what could have been>.