Personally invite international atists to take part on a residency program dedicate to artists with underrepresentation in the art establishment and the institutional representation with the purpose on giving visibility to artists focus of the collections.
The Residency opportunity consists of 2 months to 6 months duration in Berlin, Germany.
The project for the residency should be based in the creation of a new body of work inspired by Berlin that will conclude with a solo show dedicated to the artists in the exhibition space PRIOR Art Space Berlin.
The purpose of the residency is to surround the artists with a new and inspiring atmosphere, support cultural and artistic exchange, nurture experimentation and new ideas, support research and the development of new work.
Joseph Aina (b. 1996) is a Nigerian-British Artist living and working in both London and Windsor. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, upon the receipt of the Royal College of Art Studentship.
Joseph’s work investigates human nature and the way in which it is interwoven into the fabric of society. With a specific interest in contemporary notions of identity and its place within popular culture. He identifies symbols within the streets and media as methods of communication between the social and the individual. By creating an alphabet from these symbols, he constructs visual poems that romantically illustrate the ills of society. Whilst at the RCA he has focused closely on analysing the presentation of black culture within the western world. His recent mask paintings pick up on many of the ideas raised by Frantz Fanon surrounding the loss of ‘Blackness’ and identity crisis.
Taking visual cues and references from photography, Craig Cameron – Mackintosh explores the cinematic effects of light and shade reworking the traditional silhouette motif. Cameron – Mackintosh pushes the two extremes that trick the eye to create different ways of seeing the same things. In a reversal of the typical order of artistic practise, his large, highly rendered silhouette paintings inform his smaller, looser works.
“What light reveals on the one plane, it equally masks and distorts on the opposite. When the subject is backlit, the effect is almost like a photo negative – details are removed, rendering age, facial features and even skin colour of the subjects ambiguous. With a quick setting adjustment, the subject is overexposed and blown out with soft focus. I enjoy this duality of the same scene. These near life-size figures stare out into an unknown landscape, with the graduated blue canvases as their windows. ” Craig Cameron-Mackintosh Craig Cameron-Mackintosh grew up in White River, Mpumalanga an environment which inspired many great South African artists including Keith Alexander and Esias Bosch. Showing a prodigious talent for drawing from an early age and despite not having studied fine art he has drawn influence from fellow South African artists. Cameron – Mackintosh moved to Cape Town in 2007 to study filmmaking at AFDA which has deeply influenced his artistic career; not only lending a sense of cinema and story to his subject matter but also informing his technique. Craig Cameron – Mackintosh is the winner of the 2019 Sanlam Portrait Award.
The practice of every day life
The residency work is strongly inspired on the texts by Michel de Certeau – General introduc- tion to the practice of everyday life and on the book “Handbook of Tirany”, by Theo Deutinger.
Michel de Certeau in his essay talks about the idea of strategies vs tactics (society and institu- tions vs users) as a vehicle for “freedom”. For this show I focus on objects such as a police barrier (given to me by the Berlin Police department) used to control crowds during demonstrations, which are stored in some public visible spaces of the city; pipes from buildings water drainage systems; barbed wire; emergency golden blankets that I collected in Lesbos in 2016, during my volunteer period in that Greek Island (these blankets were all used by refugees/migrants upon their arrival to Lesbos (Europe).
My actions with these important context objects are framed with the idea of ‘tactics’ as de Certeau conceptualizes in his writings. I have dismantled the police barrier and repurposed it, as well with the pipes used for drainage; painted a wall fence that exists between the border of Ceuta/Melilla (which is the closest border fence to Lisbon, the city where I am based), in- spired by the book by Theo Deutinger, where he compiles most of the border fences that exist around the world and also mechanisms to control the population, from police tactics to plants or drones; used a full emergency golden blanket from Lesbos, to paint two views of skulls, trans- formed on photoshop with the style of the Obama poster of 2008, “Hope”, by Shepard Fairey; and others.
I play with the meaning of all these objects and propose new approaches for the future.
Pedro Pires, Berlin, March 2022, Cuperior Collection residency program.