SACATAR WILL BE AWARDING THREE ADDITIONAL FELLOWSHIPS:
TWO IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE UNESCO/ASCHBERG BURSARY PROGRAMME
ONE IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS / CITY OF LOS ANGELES

 

 

The UNESCO/Aschberg bursary programme awards two bursaries annually to the Instituto Sacatar, one in music / composition and one in visual arts.  These bursaries are restricted to artists between the ages of 25 and 35 years old, born and living in Africa, Asia (including the Middle East), Russia, the former Soviet Socialist Republics, Australia, New Zealand and/or the Pacific Islands.  Applications MUST ARRIVE on or before November 16, 2009 at the Instituto Sacatar in Itaparica, Brazil.  The Fellowships will take place from October 26 to December 20, 2010. 

 

For more information about the UNESCO/Aschberg bursary to the Instituto Sacatar, please go to the APPLICATION page at our website www.sacatar.org. 

 

The UNESCO/Aschberg bursary programme provides opportunities for young artists from all around the world.  Each residency program has its own restrictions and requirements.  For more information about the other partners in the UNESCO/Aschberg programme, go to www.unesco.org/culture/aschberg. 

 

 

For the first time, the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles, in partnership with the Sacatar Foundation, is offering two Fellowships to the Instituto Sacatar.  The recipient of the first Fellowship will be Los Angeles-based author and educator Jamie Diamond.  The second Fellowship is open to artists of ANY DISCIPLINE who are American citizens living in the COUNTY of Los Angeles.   Applications must be POSTMARKED by November 16, 2009 and sent to the Sacatar Foundation in Pasadena, California. 

 

For more information about the Department of Cultural Affairs Fellowship, please go to the APPLICATION page at our website www.sacatar.org.

 

SPECIAL PROJECT – MANY DESTINATIONS, ONE BAHIA
AN OFFICIAL EVENT OF THE YEAR OF FRANCE IN BRAZIL

 

From July 25 to October 3, 2009, five French artists participated in our Special Project for the Year of France in Brazil: Many Destinations, One Bahia.  This was a residency program with a twist.  The five selected artists came to the Instituto Sacatar for a week of orientation. Then each went for a three week residency at a different city in the interior of Bahia.

 

 

 

Dany Leriche and her husband Jean-Michel Fickinger went to São Félix, a colonial town a few hours from Sacatar where they photographed Les Fils et Les Filles de Dieux, portraits of local citizens wearing the clothes of their faith, from simple tee-shirts to the full regalia of the orixás of the candomblé (the saints of the African religions practiced widely in Brazil). 
 

 

 

Étienne Yver did drawings and paintings inspired by the sertão, the harsh desert surrounding Vitória da Conquista.  He also worked, as requested, with a local poet, Elomar.

 

 

 

Jean-Marc Godès staged his photographic tableaux with the people of Juazeiro, a city on the banks of the São Francisco River.  Upon his return to Sacatar, he continued creating his striking images with the citizens of Itaparica. 

 

 

 

Sophie Preveyraud photographed and made a book about her stay with the people in Igatu, a tiny village nestled high in the mountains of the Chapada Diamantina, a former diamond mining district.  She graciously donated 500 copies of the book to sell in the gift shop at the Galeria Arte & Memória in Igatu as a fund-raising project for her host institution.

 

 

 

Louis Pavageau, in conjunction with the local artist cooperative known as Gema, installed his urban interventions in the busy commercial crossroads of Feira de Santana.

 

At the end of their three-week residencies, the artists returned to Itaparica and the Instituto Sacatar where they stayed an additional month.  During this time, they prepared a traveling exhibition of work inspired by their impressions of Bahia.  Two concurrent exhibitions opened on September 28 at the Alliance Française and the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, both in Salvador.  The exhibitions will travel to the five cities where the French artists were in residence.  

 

 

 

 

During the project Many Destinations, One Bahia, the Instituto Sacatar suffered its most tragic loss since its inception: the death of the artist Louis Pavageau.  Louis woke in high spirits on September 14.  After breakfast with the other Fellows, he asked if Raimundo, our maintenance guy, could accompany him to the hardware store to pick up materials for his upcoming exhibition.  The two headed off on bicycles.  Halfway to the hardware store, Louis dismounted, put his hand to his chest and collapsed.  Raimundo flagged a car, which drove the two of them to the hospital, but en route Louis died of a congenital heart defect.  He was twenty-seven years old.

 

His loss was immediately acknowledged with memorials held by friends in La Réunion and by the artists’ collective with whom he worked in Feira de Santana.  The other four French artists in residence at Sacatar created a moving tribute in honor of him at the Museu de Arte Moderna.  They illuminated in bright white light the wall where Louis had intended a site-specific installation.  A brief text mourned his absence.  An adjacent computer remained open to his website www.lignesrouges.com.

 

 

               Les artistes sont des fleurs sauvages.
 
Ils éclosent de façon inattendue.
 
                                                    Les artistes sont des fleurs sauvages.
 
Lors de leurs voyages, ils accueillent, recueillent et communient de manière imprévue.
 
                             Les artistes sont des fleurs sauvages.
 
Ils sont forts, courageux et ne peuvent être apprivoisés.
 
                                                                      Les artistes sont des fleurs sauvages.
 
Leurs créations solitaires ou en groupe sont surprenantes.
 
Les artistes sont des fleurs sauvages.
 
Ils essaiment et remettent en question nos idées et nos sens.
 
                            Les artistes sont des fleurs sauvages.
 
Pour notre plus grand bonheur, ils persistent dans nos coeurs.

 

*************************************************************************

                Artists are wildflowers.

 

They spring up unexpectedly.

 

                                                 Artists are wildflowers.

 

They travel and intermingle in ways we can’t predict. 

 

                                  Artists are wildflowers.

 

They are strong and courageous and can’t be tamed.

 

                                                                           Artists are wildflowers.

 

They produce stunning results - on their own or with others.

 

Artists are wildflowers.

 

They cross-pollinate, challenging our ideas and senses,

 

                               Artists are wildflowers.

 

They have found ways to live on – so fortunately for us.

 

by Mitch Loch, President, Sacatar Foundation
for Louis Pavageau and his family

 

 

A new group of artists arrived at the Instituto Sacatar on October 26, 2009.  Three of the artists come to us in partnership with the UNESCO/Aschberg bursary programme:

 

• Aneli Munteanu, a visual artist from Romania;

• Rae Howell, a jazz musician and composer from Australia;

• Zahra Beigi, a visual artist from Iran. 

 

 

Zahra was not permitted to fly to Brazil through London; she did not have a transit visa.  With a lot of persistence and courage, she scheduled another flight and arrived in Bahia three days after the scheduled beginning of her residency.  She has happily arrived, but not quite in time for the first group photo!

 

Also in residence are two Brazilians:

 

• Rodrigo Castro de Jesus, a vídeo-artist and former monk from São Paulo.  (His monastic order issued an ultimatum after his last exhibition.  He had to choose between being an artist and being a monk.  He chose the former.)  Rodrigo is the first artist to be placed from this year’s open selection process. 

• Sandro Pimentel is our fourth artist-in-residence from the city across the bay, Salvador, Bahia.  He is the recipient of the Sacatar Prize awarded in 2008 at the 9th Biennale of the Recôncavo (the Bay Area of Salvador), sponsored by the Centro Cultural Dannemann of São Félix/Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil. 

 

We wish them a very productive and joyful residency! 

 

 

A Sacatar Fellowship provides airfare, studio, room and board at our beach-side estate in Itaparica, Brazil, for periods that generally last eight weeks.  This year we received over 500 applications for our arts residency program.  We are only able to host five to six artists at a time.  Subsequently, over the next two years, we will award Fellowships to only about 25 of the artists who applied this year. 

 

In June 2009, the selection committees recommended 42 Semifinalists.  We conducted an hour-long interview with each of the Semifinalists over the last several months.  Based on the interviews, we ‘curate’ groups of artists, seeking a balance of disciplines, nationalities and ages for each residency session.  At long last, we have begun to announce the Fellowships for 2010 and 2011.  We will announce the incoming Fellows during the weeks preceding each of the residency sessions.

 

 

Here follows a partial list of very recent or upcoming activities of our former Fellows.  We regret not being able to include all that we receive from former Fellows.

 

ANDREIA PINTO-CORREIA (Portugal, 2006) received a commission from the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble to compose a piece for the 7th Annual Young Composers Festival.  The world premier concert will take place on January 31, 2010, at the Goethe Institut-Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 

 

COLETTE FU (USA, 2007) has an exhibition, We Are Tiger Dragon People, from October 20 to December 23, 2009, at the Asian Arts Initiative, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.  A collection of images that literally leap from the page, We Are Tiger Dragon People features pop-up art books, collages and photographs by Colette, providing a glimpse into her ancestry and the cultural richness of the 25 ethnic groups of southwestern China.  Opening Reception: November 6, 5,30pm.

 

CORA ALMERINO (Philippines, 2003) won first prize for fiction written in the Cebuano language as part of the 2009 Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the most prestigious literary award in the Philippines.   Established in 1950 to honor Don Carlos Palanca Sr., the awards aim to help develop Philippine literature and for writers to craft their most outstanding literary works.

 

 

 

DAGMAR BINDER (Germany, 2009) had an extensive article published about her stay at the Instituto Sacatar in the German textile arts magazine, ver Filzt Und zuge Näht.  Dagmar’s work explores the sculptural capabilities of felt.  The article, while in German, has a clever double-entendre in its title, which is in English: Felt Bahia.

 

DANNY GWIRTZMAN (USA, 2003) and the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company premiered Tribe at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in Battery Park City, New York, United States, on October 21. Tribe, a contemporary dance based on ancient themes, finds inspiration from Judaism and explores the human body as a source of reflection, strength, humor and celebration. Tribe features original music composed by Shawn Baltazor and Roxy Coss played live by a jazz quintet and violinist Sarah Geller, with costumes by fashion designer Levi Okunov.

 

DAVID POZNANTER (USA, 2008) is on a 37-week, 70-city national tour doing his roue Cyr number, uni-cycling, rollerblading and singing in Cirque Dreams' new show Illumination! You can find the calendar with locations and dates at www.cirqueproductions.com.   David previously was working in the circus school at the Wyndham Resort in the Dominican Republic, where he hired two young men from Itaparica to assist him. Henrique and Fábio are local capoeiristas who David met during his residency. While David has since left this job, Henrique and Fábio are still in the Dominican Republic, running the circus program at the resort. 

 

DEREK BERMEL (USA, 2007) recently released a disc of his music, Voices, recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.  The disc is a candidate for Grammy nominations in seven categories, including best contemporary world music, best classical surround sound, best classical engineered album, best classical album, best orchestral performance, best classical contemporary composition and best crossover album.

 

ERICA HARRIS (USA, 2007) has a six-week residency at the Kriti Gallery in Varanasi, India this winter. She will be working on collages and drawings that will be exhibited in the Kriti Gallery at the end of her stay. She will also be painting a mural in collaboration with local children and conducting bookmaking workshops for the public at their beautiful gallery space: www.kritigallery.com. To raise funds for these projects, she has opened an online shop of prints, drawings, and collages: www.ericaharris.etsy.com.   Erica also has a solo exhibition of her collages, Remains to Be Seen, at the Visual Art Center of Louisiana Tech University of Art in Ruston, Louisiana, USA, from October 29 through December 3. 

 

ERMAN (Cuba>USA, 2005) has a site-specific installation and survey of his work from 2000 to the present, Erman: Cortando, Cociendo y Recordando, at West Dade Regional Library, Miami, Florida, United States, ending December 17, 2009.

 

 

 

HANNAH MORRIS (USA>South Africa, 2007) had an exhibition of the work she produced while in residence at Sacatar, entitled Através do Olho Mágico / Through the Peephole, from September 28 to October 16, at the AVA Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa.  During her residency she worked with Brazilian children’s author Rogério de Andrade.  The result of their collaboration, Contos de Itaparica, will be published by Grupo SM and is scheduled for release in early 2010.

 

 

IEDA OLIVEIRA (Brazil, 2005) maintained an ongoing performance installation at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, from September 28 to October 25, based on a replica of the grocery store her parents operated when she was child.  Her ‘store’ opening coincided with the first night of the Instituto Sacatar’s exhibition as part of our residency project for the Year of France in Brazil. 

 

IVANIA KUNZLER and MARCELO TCHELI (Brazil, 2008) received the Fumproarte Prize for the puppets they built during their residency at the Instituto Sacatar. These prizes are awarded by the City of Porto Alegre in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, to projects of outstanding artistic merit.

 

LAURA ANDEL (Argentina>USA, 2004) performed her new compositions for cornet, fender Rhodes, piano, baritone and gamelan ensemble at The Brecht Forum in New York, New York, USA, on October 17.

 

MARIA ABEGUNDE (USA, 2003) will have an excerpt from her novel, which she worked on while at Sacatar, published in Best African American Fiction 2010.   She and her husband André (Bubu), whom she met while in Itaparica during her residency, are currently living in Bloomington, Indiana, where she is completing her PhD.

 

OLEK  (Poland>USA, 2009) had an exhibition of her crocheted text-message balloons, We Mock What We Don't Understand, at the Marmara Gallery in New York, New York, USA, starting September 17.  The work ‘slowly ceased to exist’ until the close of the exhibition on October 18.  At the conclusion of her residency at Sacatar in January, Olek exhibited her work at the Museu do Traje e do Têxtil in Salvador.  Here is a video of her performance at the opening:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywvUfS7YSUU.

 

PINAR YOLOCAN (Turkey>USA, 2006) exhibits her photographs that she realized during her residency in Itaparica in a group show, Dress Codes, at the International Center of Photography in New York, through January 17, 2010.  Here is what the New York Times review of the show had to say about Pinar’s work:

 

 

 

 

SHELLEY MILLER (Canada, 2004) has been awarded the Prix du public Contact Image in her home town of Montréal for her installation, The Wealth of Some and the Ruin of Others, in which she utilized tiles fabricated of sugar, similar to the tiled mural she produced a few months ago at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia as part of the collective exhibition, Saccharum. Although inspired by the Portuguese baroque tiles still extant in Bahia, her original installations are designed to deteriorate over a short time.  However, an outdoor billboard of a photograph taken of the installation will be on view in Montréal at the corner of Duke and William streets until August 2013. This work is part of the project Plan Large, co-produced by Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal and the Fonderie Darling.

Wishing Bells, © 2009, Sook Jin Jo

 

SOOK JIN JO (Korea>USA, 2001 and 2007) returned to Itaparica from September 27 to October 4.  As a former Fellow, she paid Sacatar forty dollars/day for room and board during her stay.  This offer is available to all former Fellows, whenever space is available at the Instituto.  She came to work on a photographic book about the cemeteries of Itaparica, to be published next year in Korea.  She also has an installation, entitled Chairs, in exhibition at the Sabina Lee Gallery in the gallery district of Chinatown, Los Angeles, California, USA, from October 17 to November 28, 2009.  There will be a preview of her permanent public art installation, Wishing Bells / to Protect & to Serve, at the Los Angeles Metro Detention Center, a recently completed and award-winning new facility located a few blocks from the Sabina Lee Gallery. Sook Jin works primarily with abandoned and found wood, producing drawings, collages, photos, sculptures, site-specific installations and performance pieces.  She reclaims windowpanes, doors, chairs, and branches in order to evoke the memory and history inherent in them. As she delves into the essence of such materials, she consequently unearths fundamental dualities: space and form, destruction and rebirth, past and present, material and spiritual.

 

STACEY STEERS (USA, 2006)  announces the publication of a new flip book, Before the Fall and After the Beds, her first project with the publisher Shark's Ink.  The book consists of 48 two-sided pages with two covers. The pages are hand printed lithographs, cut and bound to create a two-sided book 5-7/8 x 9-7/8 x 1 inch. It has been printed in an edition of 20, plus proofs, on Soft White Magnani Pescia paper. The publication price is $800.  www.sharksink.com.  Stacey Steers' films are created from thousands of handmade works on paper, often collages or individually painted drawings. The original handmade collages incorporate figures from Eadweard Muybridge's Human and Animal Locomotion, first published in 1887. The book is designed to be held and flipped, animating the images.  There are two sequences, each one accessed by turning the book over.

 

SUNNY TAYLOR (USA, 2004) has a solo exhibition, Animal, at the Rowan Morrison Gallery in Oakland, California, USA, through November 28.  Sunny’s current body of work explores two themes that have preoccupied her art for many years: the oppression of disabled people and the oppression of animals. The work in this show examines these intersections by exploring various photographic discourses of animals and disabled people, including butcher diagrams, medical photographs and sideshow images. Through her paintings, Taylor asks controversial and challenging questions about rights, responsibility, independence and what it means to be compared to an animal.

 

VIGA GORDILHO (Brazil, 2004) is the current President of ANPAP – Associação Nacional de Pesquisadores em Artes Plásticas - a national organization that brings together art critics and academics. She organized this year’s conference, held in Salvador during the last week of September, with over 300 members in attendance.

 

YUMI KORI (Japan, 2008) exhibited a small architectural/sculptural piece, Portable Infinity Device, in the group show, A Matter of Light, at Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea, New York, USA, from September 24 to October 30.  www.elgawimmer.com

 

 

 

GABRIEL KRAM (USA, 2006) is the father of Talullah Azul Kram, born August 25th.  He reports that the baby is very healthy, has great color, strong lungs and ‘looks like she's travelled a great distance to be here with us.’

 

 

PIPLU (Bangladesh, 2004) is the father of Dunia (World), born on September 29.  Dunia also looks like he has come a long way!

 

 

SOPHIE LECOMTE (France, 2004) gave birth to Angelico on August 8.  He is shown here with his sister Luna.

 

Stacey Steers' grandson Elijah

 

STACEY STEERS (USA, 2006) is grandmother to Elijah David Gil, born on September 7.

And while speaking of babies, one of our peahens disappeared for a few days.  We discovered her nesting in a mango tree, with five eggs beneath her.  More babies on the way…

 

The peahen in hiding, © 2009, Mitch Loch

 

 

How do we remember artists after they leave the island?  Well, obviously, their two-month residencies result in anecdotes that are shared among members of the staff and the larger community – usually attached to big grins, sometimes wild laughter, yet often accompanied by far-off looks and soulful expressions.  One of the rules of storytelling is that anecdotes change over time, and many Sacatar artists become local legends.  Sacatar is an experiment in cross-cultural immersion.  We are all fishes out of water in Itaparica.

 

We have videotaped interviews with almost every artist who has been in residence, and those conversations are already proving to be invaluable records of Sacatar’s evolving status on the island and within the global art world.  When viewed later and outside of the context, date and place in which they were taped, these hours of interviews remind us that “memory” is a challenging, powerful subject for artists - and for growing institutions too.

 

In this issue of the Jornal Sacatar, we’d like to initiate a new tradition of paying tribute to the artists who have left us not just with anecdotes, recorded interviews and shared, collaborative experiences with the islanders but with generous gifts of art work that they produced during their stays on the island.  Such gifts, indeed welcome and appreciated, become property of the Sacatar Foundation, the U.S.-based non-profit organization that raises money for the Instituto Sacatar and whose California offices provide an obviously less-humid environment in which to store donated artwork, signed books and the like.  We are unsure as to the lasting power of video, but we hope that future generations of curators and archivists will enjoy Sacatar’s ever-growing collection of donated works.

 

This new tradition of publicly acknowledging the generosity of so many Sacatar artists over the years begins – not exactly randomly - with this piece (below) by Erman, a Cuban-born, Miami-based visual and textile artist who was in residence at Sacatar in 2006.  Working nonstop in our semi-outdoor studio called Água, Erman made use of several large tables and a sewing machine while he fought against the wind and other natural forces, like bird droppings, with humor and occasional exasperation.  Any former Sacatar Fellow will immediately recognize and appreciate the on-site inspiration for this gifted, carefully crafted work that we now treasure in our California office.  Thanks, Erman. 

 

Mitch Loch
President, Sacatar Foundation, US/Brazil

 

 

 

This untitled piece was created during my residency using sewing, writing ,drawing, recycled textiles and paper.  Inspired by “Quinta Pitanga” (ed: Sacatar’s inherited name for the property serving the residency program) and my stay there, the methodology and piece itself are representative of "The Book Pages," a series that started in 1999 and is ongoing.   In this series of introspections, I confront, analyze and, when successful, resolve personal issues of my human condition - dealing with exile, migration, religion, up-rootedness and trans-culturalism among others…  

 

Erman (Juan González), Miami, FL, USA