OPEN STUDIOS FALL
23.11.2023
During the summer session of our traditional Open Studios held on Thursday, November 23, 2023, the public was invited to come and discover the work in progress of the residents and enjoy installations and performances created especially for this event.
Selected as part of our partnership with the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe presented a performance as part of his residency project Territoires Humains. Initiated during the pandemic, the project explores the ambivalence between two terms from the Bantu languages – Swahili and Lingala – that express both a desire for refusal or renunciation and for encounter and discovery.
Jelena (Jelly) Luise & Sanja Grozdanić revealed the beginnings of their project Lily of the Valley (working title), which focuses on extractivism in the former Yugoslavia. Taking as their starting point the economic, cultural, and environmental aspects of coal and lithium mining, the two artists examine how extractivist ideals clash with pre-war socialist ethics, and look at the post-war mismanagement of these industries, as well as recent examples of resistance against mining authorities.
Laureate of a residency at La Becque following her studies in Visual Arts at EDHEA – École de design et haute école d’art du Valais, Amina Jendly displayed several of her current research projects, including an installation that examines the relationships between human beings and the water sources that surround them, an edition of visual representations of the electrical signals of micro-organisms that the artist recorded at La Becque, and a project that bears witness to inter-species relationships within the residency. Jendly also unveiled the stages of her collaborative project Futurités croisées, 2220 à 3000, which brings together “human and non-human” participants to create a speculative science-fiction narrative.
Invited as part of the Shifting Places program initiated by artlink and supported by Pro Helvetia, Olena Morozova showed several works from her recent photographic projects, including some pieces from Granny, unveiled in 2021 at the Odesa Photo Days, her photographic collage project Diffusion (2023), her work I Knew She Would Never Have Children (2018-2023), which offers a reflection on notions of life and death, reality and illusion, and Quantum (2023), which questions the representation of human bodies from the Middle Ages to the age of transhumanism.
Having just arrived at La Becque as part of our partnership with ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, which offers artists the opportunity to carry out a personal project while working at ECAL for a semester, Alejo Moguillansky presented a scene shot in Cadiz a few weeks ago, which could serve as a prologue to the film he plans to shoot during his residency.
Open Studios Fall 2023, photo Aurélien Haslebacher