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October 2026

Fall into Focus program October Bernardita Bertelsen Santiago, Chile Drawing, Ceramics, Installation www "Where there is matter, there is geometry." - Johannes Kepler My core interest centres on repetition and its paradoxical relationship to temporality and individuality. I rely on repetition as a path toward deeper understanding—from shaping forms to contemplating abstract concepts and feelings. My process begins with systematic methods for order and efficiency, gradually shifting into repetitive, almost mechanical gestures. This repetition is essential: it grounds me, giving meaning to my work and offering introspective calm amid life's inherent chaos. Mathematics, patterns, and geometry become avenues for approaching universal laws through curiosity and intuitive exploration. Geometry, a constant in my practice, bridges precision with intuition. I maintain an intimate relationship with materials, working across drawing, sculpture, installation, embroidery, video animation, painting, and hand-painted ceramic tiles, where digital tools and manual techniques coexist in balance—allowing me to explore my interest in finding patterns in the everyday. Siyu Zhong Beijing, China Painting www I'm a painter. I grew up in Haidian, in northwest Beijing, and have lived mostly in the United States since I was fourteen. I studied at the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. Most of my recent paintings are of places in Haidian that nobody would call sights, like an empty lot beside a rail line that never had a name, the building across the walkway from ours, a park I learned only much later was one of the old named views of the city. I paint them from memory, in oil, without sketches. The paintings build up slowly, and after one is finished I usually write a short piece of prose about it, often in Chinese first. Clarissa Poedjiono Germany / Indonesia Painting, Creative Coding www I use visual art to metabolize scenes through my perceptions and memories. A constant movement and change in my life urged me to explore the perception of identity in the space where culture and evolution could co-exist. When things are always moving, a focal point is needed to keep me grounded, shining a light through complexity and ambiguity. The resulting scenes are reflections of perceptions and explorations of observation, creating tension that is expected in the state where appreciation and accentuation are often delineated by distance in space and time.

Adam Zmith London, UK Writing www Adam Zmith is a writer, author, podcast host, and audio producer. His work uncovers the power of LGBTQ+ pleasures and communities, while excavating the forces working against them. Adam is the co-author, along with Tash Walker, of The Log Books: Voices of Queer Britain and the Helpline that Listened (Faber, 2026). Tash and Adam are also co-founders of the culture company Aunt Nell. Adam is the author of Solemates: A History of Our Fetish for Feet (404 Ink, 2024) and Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures (Repeater Books, 2021), which won the Polari First Book Prize 2022. He writes theatre shows, talks and podcasts, including Press Play Turn On which won Podcast of the Year at the British Podcast Awards 2024. Photo by Jade Smith Susan MacLeod Halifax, NS, Canada Drawing, Comics, Painting www "I explore societal issues through cartoons." My creative work explores aging and end-of-life challenges. Currently I'm looking at how and why so much of healthcare is delivered within systems that don’t successfully make compassionate a priority. I have a contract from Nimbus Publishing for my second graphic non-fiction book, “Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Graphic Narrative About Compassion in Healthcare”. Using sequential cartoons, I tell first-person stories of bad and good behaviour in healthcare settings. I ask experts in compassionate healthcare to provide commentary on these situations. I want to be compassionate and understanding to healthcare providers by explaining the context in which they work; the tone is light-hearted and kind. I won a 2025 national Canadian art competition on the Art of a Good Death in the category, Effectiveness in Communicating Research. My first publication, a humorous book, “Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care”, was published by Conundrum Press, 2021. It received an Outstanding in its Genre recognition in the American Library Association publication, Booklist. Lydia Janssen Indonesia / USA Painting www As a former professional modern dancer, having sustained career ending injuries, Lydia Janssen’s artistic practice for the past 20 years has had its roots in movement. As an American born expat, now living in Asia for 15 years, movement that was once associated with dance, has now become that of a nomad and has brought up feelings of displacement and questions of community, identity and home. Lydia uses oil paint, charcoal and pastels, mainly on linen and paper, diluting the oils as if to create a stain or conjuring up a sense of impermanence or motion or memory.

Nicole Morris Ireland / USA Poetry, Essays www "Storytelling as meaning-making, as grief-work, as self-reclamation." Nicole Morris is a Black working-class poet and essayist. After a twenty-year career in the service industry as a waitress, she began writing professionally in 2023 in the postgraduate Creative Writing course at the University of Galway, Ireland. She has been published in North American and Irish journals, including The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere. A Tin House Workshop alum, Nicole is a recipient of the 2025 Irish Arts Council Literature Bursary and the winner of the 2026 Cúirt New Writing Prize, essay category. She draws from her lived experience as a mother, a once-wife, an educator, and a descendant of generations of escape artists, outcasts, survivors, deadbeats, addicts, and the mentally ill. Her writing interrogates identity, power hierarchies, harm/repair, intention/impact, and attempts to answer essential questions about who deserves to be forgiven, forsaken, or forgotten. Originally from Los Angeles, she lives in the West of Ireland, where she is developing a lyrical essay collection and a memoir in verse. Ming Ma Shanghai, China Installation, Digital Media, Painting www "Everything is connected, yet every being remains whole and entirely its own." Ma Ming is a Shanghai-based interdisciplinary artist working across installation, digital media, painting, and moving image. She is interested in invisible connections — between people, nature, and the world around us — and in how things can be deeply connected while still remaining independent. Her ideas often begin intuitively, as images, feelings, or forms that seem to come from nowhere. She likes to follow them through making, without needing to understand everything at the beginning. At Arteles, she hopes to slow down, spend more time in nature, and let new ideas emerge through walking, observing, drawing, and painting. Ben Davis Corning, NY, USA Photography, Bookbinding, Video www Ben Davis’s (b. 1994) creative practice engages different representations of time to reflect on family history and the weight of unspoken struggles, whether that takes the form of a self-paced book or the flashing flicker of a film. Using photography, video, collage, and handmade artist books, he explores themes of inherited conditions, shared visual languages, and the materiality of images through a combination of digital and analog processes. The family archive is a frequent collaborator, a tool for both inspiration and connection to dead family members. Occasionally, he incorporates figures from popular culture and found ephemera, such as silk flowers, into his work to comment on larger cycles of addiction and grief. Ben holds an MFA from the University of Arizona with a focus on Photography, Video, and Imaging, as well as a BFA in Fine Art Photography and a BS in Biomedical Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Sarah Firth Melbourne, Australia Artist, Author, comics www "Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Sarah Firth is an artist, author and sculptor based in Melbourne Australia. Her work is poignant and humorous, exploring complexity, the big and small questions of living and sense making in the more-than-human world. She has received a Talking Difference Fellowship from the Immigration Museum, was a finalist in the Incinerator Gallery Award For Social Change and her comics were part of Eisner Award-winning and Ignatz nominated comic anthologies. Her debut graphic novel “Eventually Everything Connects” won The Emily Toth Award, a Gold Ledger Award, was shortlisted for The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, The Age’s Non-Fiction Pick of The Week, ALIA’s Notable Graphic Novels and listed as one of The Best Graphic Novels Ever by Refinery29. Fiona Adamson Bristol, UK 3D Conceptual, Performance, Stitching www From 2004 I studied at Central Saint Martins, at Wimbledon College of Art and at Dartington School of Art. Individuals in my family have experienced so-called ‘serious mental health issues’. I look at what that means, at how humans are part of the natural world and how everything is connected. I sense that the so-called 'issues' are the result of painful experiences so I have used my mother’s repetitive writing, and images of my daughter’s birthmark. I have more to make, think and do about them, about truth and lies, fact and fiction, terror and confusion, and relationships with the natural world. I experiment with stitching, knitting wire, conversing with plants, and building. I use different materials; paper, threads, wire, graphite, paint. I am a climate activist, de-escalator on protests and climate choir member, and I engage almost daily with an organisation that has radical ideas on the need for human closeness, and on liberation from powerlessness. Mental health oppression is seen alongside sexism, racism and many others as a form of oppression affecting everyone. Sabrina Ekstein Sydney, Australia Writing, Photography www "There is no such thing as a circle" S.R. Ekstein is an emerging Australian writer and poet, often overwhelmed by the cosmically ontological. She is fascinated by ancient mythologies, the philosophical sublime, and the linguistic potentials of poetry and how poetical context can shift the space/time of a narrative. She is also constantly thinking about the stories we tell ourselves of our own lives, and what extreme disruptions to those narratives can transform these stories into. Her current work is exploring labyrinths, identity, and the illusion of meaning and memory. She is using a research and reflection based approach, through academic literature, and through the ecological study of the Finnish environment, and the microsystems that both do and don’t exist around and within it. There are always unseen dimensions that influence our meaning-making, and interpretation of such meaning-making, and this is what she is interested in constructing/deconstructing on the page. See the list of all the Arteles residents here

September 2026

Back to Basics Program September Harry Lochhead Melbourne, Australia Music www I make music for the fun of it, out of curiosity and excitement at what I might find. For me, the process is grounded in play and intuition, following what feels surprising and sounds cool. In this way I get to enter or create new worlds, feelings, and experiences. Wading into the mystery, swimming around, occasionally making contact with something beyond. It really is a good time. Dee Gibson Glen Margaret, Canada Drawing, Installation, Performance www "Currently, Dee Gibson is interested in exploring the connections between the ageing female body and the natural environment through the lens of attentive introspection" My art practice is deeply tied to place. I spend a lot of time walking and pay particular attention to things that are unseen yet sensed or that happen on the periphery of my awareness. In my work, I create experiences based on my perceived sense of an environment and explore the connections between the natural environment and attentive introspection. Repetitive and laborious processes have become a way to access a contemplative state, as well as a way to connect and build community. I am drawn to common, everyday materials that often have varying degrees of translucency, impermanence and inherently ghostly qualities. I prefer to use media that shift, dissolve, disintegrate or corrupt with time so as to highlight our ephemeral presences and the subtle shifts in humanity within environments. For the residency at Arteles, I will explore themes of aging, the human spirit and the natural world, using drawing, ritual and performative elements to create site-specific installations. Lu Xiong Toronto, Canada Writing, Culinary, Book publishing "I often say the most by leaving something unsaid." Writing has followed a meandering path. I began in graduate school, reading literature, then cofounded a company where ideas took material form through design, made-to-order products, and a brand. Both led me back to words themselves, to lingering over and grinding away at them until something felt true. I believe emotion reaches us in fragments and that short prose may best record a truth. Drawing from Nietzsche, Benjamin, Barthes, and the Chinese xiaopin wen tradition, I favor intimacy, digression, and attentiveness over narrative continuity. My last book explored time through walks, meals, marginalia, and seasonal change. A livre de chevet, it joined prose, calligraphy, and book design for unhurried reading. My current work centers on vegetables. I grew up in southern China’s lake region, where variety was part of daily life. After moving to the US and Canada, their absence made me attentive to what was left behind and what surrounds me now. Through writing and culinary experiences, I explore remembered and local ingredients and how food can feel familiar and foreign.

Rodrigo Ribeyro São Paulo, Brazil Film/Cinema "The city is nature upside down." Rodrigo Ribeyro is a filmmaker graduated at the Academia Internacional de Cinema of São Paulo and the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia. His first short fiction film, Cantareira, won awards at the La Cinef competition of the 74th Festival de Cannes and at the main brazilian festivals. In 2025, he was selected for La Résidence of Festival de Cannes with his first feature film project, Muganga, and also joined the Locarno Filmmakers Academy. In 2026, he was selected for Berlinale Talents. Raised in the Serra da Cantareira forest, his work investigates the sensory relations between city, nature, and work. He has also collaborated with the Cinema do Brasil program in the international promotion of Brazilian cinema, participating in festivals such as Cannes, Berlinale, Locarno, San Sebastián, Busan, Guadalajara, Rotterdam, and Ventana Sur. Jesse Moussy France Photography, Sculpture, Writing "I make work from whatever I can’t seem to leave alone." I’m a French, Brisbane-based visual artist working mainly with photography, sculpture and installation. I started with portrait photography, moved towards landscapes, and have gradually become more interested in what I think of as anti-portraiture, suggesting a person or an emotional state without necessarily showing the person themselves. My work often comes from a lot of thinking, observing and writing, and I’m interested in the relationship between identity, intimacy, memory and the spaces we inhabit. I like working with ordinary, sometimes domestic objects and giving them a different weight. Photography, text and objects often overlap in my practice, and I enjoy letting one medium lead me towards another rather than deciding everything beforehand. I’m interested in work that feels intimate, slightly unexpected, and maybe a little uncomfortable. I want my work to be something you can stumble across rather than something that always needs to be searched for, explained or scrolled past. Lucky McIntyre New York City, USA Writing, Performance, Film www "Lucky McIntyre (he/him) is a queer trans dancer-turned-drag king from NYC writing his first memoir - What I Did For Love." Lucky McIntyre is a queer Manhattan-based writer, performer, and psychotherapist. Grounded in curiosity, he writes about transformation through travel, creativity, and love—especially where tenderness and risk meet, and love becomes a lived practice. Born and raised in Downstate New York by a ballerina and a drummer, Lucky is deeply influenced by music and dance. With 30 years of dance-theatre training and performance across styles, he believes everyone is a Dancer and the revolution benefits from everybody reclaiming this innate human act. His current work explores the intersection of dance and performance, identity and belonging, and the things we do for love. He is the recipient of the Motive 4 Artists! Residency to create his first one man show, holds a BA in Environmental Studies and Dance, a MA in Somatic Psychology, and is named a Top 5 NYC Drag King as his alter ego Sly Saturn - the Dancing King of New York. He is a proud autistic trans-masc lesbian dedicated to supporting his community as a healer in his licensed private practice Sit With Sol Therapy.

Dominique Somers Antwerpen, Belgium Photography, Multimedia, Writing www "A chance alignment / held just long enough / to be pressed into light" My practice can be characterized as a form of research in which I probe into the relationship of visual media to (deep) time, ephemeral phenomena, and the mechanisms of controlled observation and registration. During my residency, I want to work on Ground Variations, a project that stems from my interest in alternative forms of cartography. Traditional maps mainly describe a place through topography and boundaries. Many elements that also characterize a landscape remain outside the frame: atmospheric conditions, rhythms of light, subtle ecological processes, or acoustic properties. I will explore how a place can be approached through forms of artistic countermapping, in which photography, written notes, drawings, and field recordings function as ways to register and interpret these often invisible characteristics of a landscape. Ground Variations connects to ideas that historically base navigation on moving and temporary phenomena. At Arteles, I want to explore this further by means of approaching the environment as a dynamic constellation of processes, traces and stories. Chao Wang Hangzhou, China Painting, Drawing, Printmaking www "YOU ARE BUGS" Chao Wang is a contemporary artist whose practice explores microsystems shaped by fungi and insects, forms of life that exist at the edge of human perception yet quietly sustain the world. Working across painting, printmaking, and drawing, she investigates how these organisms overlap, intertwine, and construct unseen relationships within shared environments. Her compositions are built through repetition, mutation, and accumulation. Through material and process, she translates invisible ecological systems into tactile and visual experiences. In her daily life, Wang often practices yoga or plays tennis before beginning her studio hours, using movement and physical activity to build energy and prepare herself for creative work. She also enjoys hiking and immersing herself in the embrace of forests and nature, where she finds inspiration through direct encounters with the natural environments that inform her artistic practice. Ben Davis Corning, NY, USA Photography, Bookbinding, Video www Ben Davis’s (b. 1994) creative practice engages different representations of time to reflect on family history and the weight of unspoken struggles, whether that takes the form of a self-paced book or the flashing flicker of a film. Using photography, video, collage, and handmade artist books, he explores themes of inherited conditions, shared visual languages, and the materiality of images through a combination of digital and analog processes. The family archive is a frequent collaborator, a tool for both inspiration and connection to dead family members. Occasionally, he incorporates figures from popular culture and found ephemera, such as silk flowers, into his work to comment on larger cycles of addiction and grief. Ben holds an MFA from the University of Arizona with a focus on Photography, Video, and Imaging, as well as a BFA in Fine Art Photography and a BS in Biomedical Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Molly Hankinson Glasgow, UK Painting, Murals, Drawing, Public intervention, Installation www I am a UK-based artist from London living in Glasgow, Scotland. My work interrogates ideas of safety, space, and perception, weaving personal and collective experiences into playful, emotive, and energetic artworks. My practice spans studio painting, murals, and other urban interventions, and more recently I’ve been leaning into abstraction as a form of release and exploration. Overall, I’m particularly interested in how my work can evoke a feeling, offer comfort, and serve as sites of power. Wenlin Wang Paris, France / Taiwan Hand-Torn Collage, Painting, Sculpture www "A rightful place for every sign." Born and raised in Tainan, Taiwan, and currently based in Paris, I find myself discovering what the objects in my hands want to become, without limiting their potential. I shape space as an active element of the works, and detail as a fragmentation of the image. Journeying through the space of each piece to rediscover the meaning of a story inscribed within a graphic poetry, I explore the relationship between painting and sculpture. Lisette Frimannslund Bergen, Norway Drawing, Photo-painting, Writing www I grew up in Bergen, Norway and now live and work in The Hague, The Netherlands. Before receiving my Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Royal Academy of Art The Hague I received a Master of Science in Industrial Design Engineering from TUDelft. My proces is often very research based, and in my work I combine elements of photography, painting, drawing and writing; often in the form of an itinerary, a travelogue through time, place or mind. I love long distance bike packing and a good book, although not at the same time, preferably. Zoë Backwell Dundalk, Ireland Music, Writing, Visual arts I’m an Irish musician, singer-songwriter, and performer with a background in classical violin, research, and broadcast production. I’m turning to the Back to Basics residency to tune out the noise and bombardment of modern life so I can tune into my own voice again. I’m curious how the atmosphere and quiet of the Finnish forest can inform my work. Writing, art, and music have always been a way for me to process my experiences and make sense of the world. As an emerging solo artist, my intention is to slow down, trust my intuition, and give myself permission to create without judgment. Alongside my music, I look forward to leaning into photography, drawing, cycling, deep listening, and spending time in nature - reconnecting with the pure joy of making things when it’s just for me. See the list of all the Arteles residents here

August 2026

Back to Basics Program August Lieselotte Vloeberghs Brussels, Belgium Drawing, Mixed media www Lieselotte Vloeberghs is a visual artist from Belgium. Their work departs from belief systems that generate meaning and reality. Motifs from religion, fairytales, science, the natural world and spiritual frameworks find their way into drawings and other media. Abstract theories are playfully explored through tangible figures who navigate diverse thought systems and notions of truth. Lieselotte likes to makes use of materials that are present in the day to day life. The practice of gathering, harvesting and working with things like dust, leafs, mushrooms, her dog’s fur etc, combined with the more classic drawing materials, reveals the physical, spiritual, and political significances of the matter at hand. The often dirty and earthy materials offer physical grounding to the ideas they depict, sometimes resulting in a temporary character. Lieselotte likes to play with the notion of art experience by other creatures, by making work for the sky or the forest or other things and entities. Deborah Harada Kaneohe, USA Writing, Performance www "I'm drawn to layered time in my work." I have loved books and stories and poems since I was a child. Robert Frost and Robert Louis Stevenson clicked into my brain starting when I was six--thank you Mrs. Wells! I was the kid who read her way through the library, carting home books in the daisy basket on the front of my bike. But it took a lot longer for me to claim being a writer. Now I'm happily about to begin my third novel. I'm querying agents with my second and the first is sitting in a drawer. I also teach creative writing and started the Lōʻihi Arts Foundation when Hawaiʻi became my home five years ago. The women in my stories are time travelers in the sense that reconciling the past is the way to their future. But time is a layered construct to reckon with--mysterious, unwieldy, sublime and paradoxical. Unpacking these notions is incredibly gratifying. Chantal Gagnon Edmonton, Canada Painting, Crochet, Installation www Chantal Gagnon is a London-based multi-disciplinary artist, operating as a Reflector, she utilises her lack of fixed internal definition as a creative strength, allowing her work to become a site-specific dialogue with the cities and spaces Chantal traverses and the ancestral memories she inherits. Chantal allows transmission, intuition and transmutation to dictate the resolution of each piece. Chantal’s work is less about control and more about communion with environment, intuition, and emotion. Each colour, each texture, is a response to what is felt but often unspoken. She does not set out to impose meaning, but allows meaning to emerge. Whether through the repetitive, meditative architecture of crochet, the fractured narratives of collage, or the unpredictable fluidity of ink and fire, Chantal’s work explores the way we live and the ways we heal. She embraces the beautiful disasters of the creative process to produce work that reflects not just a personal vision, but a collective state of being.

Justine Huiying Yuan France Botanical Specimen Art and Drawing, Handmade www "I create with plants as a way of listening — a quiet dialogue between human and nature." I am a botanical artist and founder of Mill’art Y.H.Y.®, based in France. My work begins with growing plants from seeds, observing their life cycles, and transforming them into delicate botanical artworks through pressing, imprinting, and handcraft techniques. I am particularly drawn to the silent language of plants — their textures, rhythms, and quiet resilience. Through my creations, I explore a way of “being with” nature rather than representing it, seeking a state of resonance between human and plant. My practice moves between art, craftsmanship, and sensory experience. I also design workshops and immersive sessions where participants reconnect with nature through touch, observation, and slow making. Rooted in a French aesthetic yet nourished by cross-cultural sensitivity, my work reflects a poetic dialogue between material, time, and life. Mary Ethna Black London, UK Creative writing www "Globe-trotting doctor, writer, much in common with salmon." I am a medical doctor from Northern Ireland and have held senior posts in medicine, social care, academia, government, and the UN, and her experience spans Asia, Australia, Central America, Europe and the USA.I currently sit on climate science boards and chair the MCS Foundation which certifies renewable energy installations in the UK. I am a founding Fellow of Chapter Zero UK and an honorary Professor in the School of Medicine at St Andrews University. A late bloomer in writing, I've recently graduated with an MA from Goldsmiths University in London and have won or been listed for over 30 writing prizes in memos, short fiction and poetry. Residencies? Bundanon, Cill Rialaig, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and Varuna. Recurrent themes in my work are migration, oceans, and the search for sanctuary. Splav will be published by Abacus in March 2027. Set in Serbia, this memoir is about finding home in an unstable world. Welcome to coffee, catfish, and chaos. I am now working on my second book. Currach.entwines the Irish diasporic identity, traditional boatbuilding, and basking sharks. Sangeetha Ramirez Amsterdam, Netherlands / Germany Dance, Psychology www Art is often framed as self-expression: the artist conveys an inner world that touches spectators through relatability or political poignancy. What if art is instead a portal for collective opening and transcendence? As a dancer in free improvisation, the "doer" stops doing and I become vessel, beyond time and space. Yet the spectating audience never sat right with me. It's not about the dance, or the music. It's merely an expression of the ineffable. Could art be a condition-maker, stripping the "doer" so presence can ripple out? If removing hiding places is art's job, its measure becomes: how little is left to hide behind? Even improvisation keeps a veil, "this is dance", with an audience. Craft, performance, "dancer" are masks. May the highest art be no mask, not less form, but removal of every role that lets anyone hide? Could someone like a monk, resting and wordlessly transmitting with no role, be the purest artist for transcending hiding? Is the highest art artless art? What then of artful art? A scaffold, not a summit? Was "art" ever more than the name for the ladder?

Janet Chase Norwich, UK Socially engaged performance, Sculpture, Photography www "Janet is reinventing herself, her way." Grief has fuelled a feminist rupture, where personal loss intersects with identity, silence, and the roles I once inhabited. My multidisciplinary approach reflects the hypercathected, emotional energy, being withdrawn and redirected during this process, allowing space for uncertainty, restlessness, and quiet remodelling. The gendered gaze, patriarchal indoctrination and positioning as an objectified other have pushed my practice beyond self, opening questions about how women’s lives are seen. Performance, photography and digital sculpture have become materials to test out new forms of being, where costumes, gesture and familiar objects allow for playful identificatory remoulding, rather than repair. Through this work, my personal transformation becomes a way to ask broader questions about women’s roles in society, ageing and the necessity to actively grieve. I am carving out new space for myself as both artist and individual, refusing to return to the version of myself, that no longer exists. Douglas Flowe USA History www I am an Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis, where I study the intersections of race, crime, and urban life in the United States. My work focuses especially on the experiences of Black men in the early twentieth century, examining how they navigated the criminal legal system and how their lives were represented in courts and public discourse. I am the author of Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York (2020), and my current book project, American Darkness, explores Black men’s experiences in New York’s Jim Crow prisons. Alison Neighbour Newport, UK Scenography, Performance, Installation www Alison is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work spans performance, scenography, sculpture, installation and walking journeys. Her practice is rooted in deeply felt responses to place, and she seeks to explore how we might re-imagine our human relationship with the rest of the living world, with a focus on participation and the embodied experience of the audience/viewer. Her work invites audiences to reflect on natural processes of change and the bigger systems that we are part of; fostering awareness and empathy, and evoking gentle calls to action that connect art, environment, and community.

Santiago Pereson Buenos Aires, Argentina Music, Sound, Noises www "Dressing sound" I'm an experimental musician and programmer from Buenos Aires, now living in Madrid. started writing experimental music in the first years of the 90's, after a decade of studying music theory and writing instrumental songs that were decent but not really satisfying to me or memorable to others. I felt the need to distance ideas from direct actions, that my hands always went to the same well-known places, harmonies and forms. By adding an additional layer of indirection, inventing methods and rules instead of improvising musical ideas "by ear", I was able to represent what I was trying to create in a much better way. Thirtysomething years later I'm writing for chamber orchestra, coding artificial composers, improvising with sounds collected from the places I discover. It has been an amazing trip, but now it's time to find new paths, to change again, to rediscover the joy in new ideas. Maybe it's about places and their shape, or about electricity, transistors and patch cables. Maybe it's about words and not sounds, or simply walking around, feeling the world for a while. Angela Fragkou Athens, Greece New Media, Bioart, New Biomaterials www "Creating new materialities to imagine ecological futures" I am a PhD artist, researcher & Bioscientist often using biosciences and digital technologies for my artistic research. My approach to individual artistic activity can be described mainly with the term “experimentation”. It is the “shaping” that takes place between art and science to organize and shape the world’s interpretive process. I use real scientific methodologies and experimental processes arrived from bio sciences, as a solid ground for my artistic work where real data, invented parameters, ecological issues and societal values, are forced to collaboration in the alternate story of a sustainable future. Therefore, I examine the interface between the person and the surrounding world, by using scientific processes, altered and modified, under the prism of artistic creation. Have participated in many scientific European research projects as a research fellow, giving lectures on interdisciplinary issues and attend many conferences. Exhibitions, workshops, publications, and collaborative projects are among my recent activities. Tom Gurn Yartapuulti/Port Adelaide, Australia Writing, Poorly-drawn Comics www "Where does play end and art begin? - Agnes Varda" I tend to write about people I meet, things I see, or general happenings both in my life and at large. I love theatre and film and have delved into those mediums from time-to-time, but that's mostly borne in my belief that stories are stories are stories. I know that we are all born storytellers to some degree. Personally, I can't remember to put the bins out or to reply to emails in a timely manner, but if something strange or funny happens I've somehow got every detail down pat for decades. I just try to cultivate that in my work, and have a bit of fun with it. See the list of all the Arteles residents here

July 2026

Back to Basics Program July Kristen Zory King Washington, DC, USA Writing, Movement, Teaching www Kristen Zory King is a writer, teaching artist, and yoga instructor based in Washington, DC. Recent work can be found in Electric Lit, Ghost Parachute, and HAD among other publications. In 2025 her chapbook of flash fiction stories, “Ladies, Ladies, Ladies,” was published by Stanchion. As a writer, Kris is interested in creating work that explores the tension between the internal self and the outside world, examining conflicts and communion between nature, ideology, and social identity. As a teaching artist and community facilitator, Kris believes that art enriches our lives and opens doors to knowledge and understanding on both a personal and collective level. She seeks to use her work both on and off the page to explore these larger themes and serve as a "finger pointing toward the moon." Kris is currently an MFA candidate at George Mason University where she is at work on a project exploring spiritual ecology. Learn more, join a workshop, or be in touch at www.kristenzoryking.com. Heidi Newbauer Mankato, MN, USA Writing, Voice www I grew up in northern Minnesota and currently write and teach in southern Minnesota. My research looks at creative consciousness, healing, and the role of the narrator in survivor stories as well as in fiction, as part of my PhD program. I have an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Literature, and a graduate certificate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. I find voice to be a place where relationships convalesce into a greater understanding of ourselves and the world. I am working on rewriting the old tropes of the heroine’s journey in a historical fiction romance taking place during the Thirty Years War. I also write poetry, essays, short stories, and take classical and Broadway voice lessons. Singing gives me a lens of lightness in what may seem heavy in my other work. I also find the movement in gestural storytelling a lot of fun and a way to further move my energy in positive ways. During my residency, I plan to spend time in nature, reconnect to my true love of reading, develop further drafts in my creative work, and nourish community. Kayla Eicholtz Kentucky, USA Sculpture, Performance, Writing www "Art is a force for revealing oppressive systems and imagining new realities." Kayla Eicholtz is a sculptor from a working-class background in rural Kentucky whose practice focuses on class, gender, and labor justice. With an emphasis on exposing the unspoken and unacknowledged truths of repressive and destructive forces, they are concerned with systems that exploit the working class and the environment. Responding to a culture defined by production and extraction, they imagine alternatives defined by understanding, connection, and interdependence. Eicholtz uses industrial and reclaimed materials to create immersive installations and environments, particularly appreciating qualities of materials that are often overlooked. The flexible and submissive nature of metal, the acoustic qualities of a bridge, and the delicate process of moving and positioning bricks are recurring themes in their work. As their practice continues to evolve, they are exploring more ecologically conscious work that reflects the relationship between the self and the environment.

Blue Delliquanti Minneapolis, USA Comic Art www "Queer comics change the world!" I am a comic artist, writer, and teacher based in Minneapolis. I first worked in comics by serializing a longform narrative, O Human Star, online for 8 years, and I contributed short stories to several anthologies. I have also written and drawn award-nominated graphic novels and novellas. I teach comics classes and serve in a mentorship capacity at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. My primary interest with my work is to explore subjects common to the genre of science/speculative fiction through a queer lens. The most interesting sci-fi narratives are those that examine the personal elements of a substantial technological or cultural change. The possibilities raised by the presence of queer lives (social, political, medical, etc) and the way in which societies respond to, adapt to, or lash out against that presence, reflects and overlaps with hopes and anxieties stoked by other kinds of change. I have developed queer narratives through the lens of robots/digital identity, culture clash on an interstellar scale, and perpetual digital surveillance. Wendy Cowan Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia Drawing, Installation, Street Theatre, Writing, Curatorial www "Walking, listening, and paying attention are the foundations of my practice." Born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland, during the height of the Troubles to an Irish mother and English father, Wendy Cowan grew up with a lived awareness of the boundaries that shape belonging, identity, and community. Experiences of being neither sufficiently Irish nor English continue to inform her work. Based in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Central Australia, Wendy is a writer, mentor, and artist whose practice spans more than four decades. Working alongside communities, cultural knowledge holders, young people, and organisations, she develops projects grounded in storytelling, learning, and social change. Her work explores how more just futures emerge through relationship. Collaborative projects have been exhibited at IMMA (Dublin), the V&A (London), Chester Beatty Library (Dublin), UNSW Galleries (Sydney), Araluen Arts Centre, Parliament House (Canberra), and Watch This Space (Mparntwe), as well as festivals in Ireland, England, and Australia. Her work has received awards from ATOM, First Nations Media Australia, and NARIS. Janine van Veen Utrecht, Netherlands Performance art, Video, Installation www "How can the body remain present when the mind wants to escape?" My name is Janine van Veen, I am a Dutch artist and professional worrier. Through video and performance, I create moving paintings and living sculptures that make invisible mental states physically visible. My body is my primary material, often placed in minimal natural environments where the landscape becomes an active partner in a visual dialogue. My artistic practice responds to a society driven by speed, productivity and constant self-optimisation by creating space for pause, stillness and embodied experience. Through physical endurance, meditative repetition, pointless rituals and often tragicomic gestures, I explore what happens when discomfort is given time and attention.

Holly Peters Plymouth, UK Writing, Research www "Everything becomes a poem eventually." I am a Plymouth-based writer and researcher. Although I work across many forms, my main discipline is poetry. As part of my PhD research project, I am writing a poetic exhibition that intends to re-memorialise the lives of four women and girls whose dead bodies were spectacularised in the nineteenth century. I am concerned with how mediations of the dead female body have transformed women into objects through which power is exercised. Through poetry, I am testing how innovative forms and the application of archives can shape new contemporary memories. I am always working on more projects than I have time for and so during the Arteles residency, while I will be working on my PhD research, I will also work on a personal collection of poems and my novel. I am looking forward to letting my writing practice surprise me and learning what kind of writer I can be. I want to be curious, to reacquaint myself with why I love writing and to become a student of my own practice during the Back-to-Basics residency. I am excited to read, explore the natural world and simply be for a little while. Douglas Flowe USA History www I am an Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis, where I study the intersections of race, crime, and urban life in the United States. My work focuses especially on the experiences of Black men in the early twentieth century, examining how they navigated the criminal legal system and how their lives were represented in courts and public discourse. I am the author of Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York (2020), and my current book project, American Darkness, explores Black men’s experiences in New York’s Jim Crow prisons. Jaz Armour Aberdeen, UK Painting, Writing, Drawing www I’m Jaz Armour and I’m a mixed media artist, writer and illustrator for comics. I'm interested in bodily transformations and nature, pulling from outdoor sketches to incorporate landscape and natural forms with human and animal bodies. I want to fall into the painting and for the space to feel hazy and suggestive. Sketches completed outside inform the next stage of my paintings, allowing me to play with colour and composition without relying on strict representations of objects or places. I enjoy the way layers of transparent watercolour can create space within layers of colour and suggestions of forms. The stories for my comics explore themes of displacement in landscape and transformation. My current comic Wayward Wanderers is about the transformation of the character in an idealised but ultimately inhospitable (for humans) landscape. I find the idea of the usefulness of humans interesting and how we would need to adapt to better suit environments without burdening them.

Enny Wokna Berlin, Germany Mixed Media, Object, Installation www "I ask questions through materials." My curiosity about the world finds a place in art, where I can ask questions without having to resolve them. It is where I indulge my sense of play and follow my fascination with simple materials. My practice often starts from something that already exists, exploring the relationships between people, objects, and their surroundings. Instead of treating uncertainty as something to overcome, I adopt it as a conscious artistic position – sometimes with irony, sometimes with sincerity. This attitude informs both my artistic practice and my teaching as an art educator in schools. Heather Moore Cape Town, South Africa Patterns, Cut Paper, Textiles www For the last 18 years, I've been running my screenprinted textiles & homewares business, Skinny laMinx. At the end of 2025, the high tariffs on South African exports to the USA had made the business no longer viable, so I'm taking a sabbatical year in my studio, exploring a new creative direction. My love of print, pattern and process is a through-line in all my work. Bridget A. Lyons Santa Cruz, CA, USA Writing, Printmakingn www "To reawaken wonder, all we need to do is step outside." Bridget A. Lyons is a writer, editor, artist, and explorer whose work focuses on appreciating the creativity and diversity of the natural world and increasing our species' awareness of the creatures and landscapes with whom we share our planet. Her written work expresses the interconnectedness of the Earth and all of its residents by weaving together strands of observation, science, personal narrative, and adventure storytelling. Bridget is also an avid printmaker who illustrated her recent book, Entwined: Dispatches from the Intersection of Species. As a professional editor, she assists other authors in shaping their manuscripts and preparing them for publication. Tom Gurn Yartapuulti/Port Adelaide, Australia Writing, Poorly-drawn Comics www "Where does play end and art begin? - Agnes Varda" I tend to write about people I meet, things I see, or general happenings both in my life and at large. I love theatre and film and have delved into those mediums from time-to-time, but that's mostly borne in my belief that stories are stories are stories. I know that we are all born storytellers to some degree. Personally, I can't remember to put the bins out or to reply to emails in a timely manner, but if something strange or funny happens I've somehow got every detail down pat for decades. I just try to cultivate that in my work, and have a bit of fun with it. See the list of all the Arteles residents here

June 2026

Way Beyond Program June Laura Hyunjhee Kim Dallas, TX, USA Video, Performance, Multimedia Art www "Laura Hyunjhee Kim is a Korean-American multimedia artist who creates post-disciplinary performances to reimagine human and nonhuman interaction through embodied ways of knowing." Laura Hyunjhee Kim is a Korean-American multimedia artist who creates post-disciplinary performances reimagining human and nonhuman interaction. Kim's work has been exhibited around the world, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Crow Museum of Asian Art, KADIST, Pioneer Works, Theatre of Digital Art in Dubai, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Vector Festival, and Athens Digital Art Festival. She has received the ArtSlant Award in New Media (2013), Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award (2020), Black Cube Video Art Award (2020), China Academy of Art's Prix City Digital Skin Art Award (2023), and Texas A&M's Creative Process Award (2023). She is the author of "Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs" (The Accomplices) and coauthor of “Remixing Persona: An Imaginary Digital Media Object from the Onto-Tales of the Digital Afterlife” (Open Humanities Press). Kim is an Assistant Professor of Visual and Performing Arts at The University of Texas at Dallas, living and working in the company of neighboring songbirds, squirrels, coyotes, and wild rabbits of Texas. Jacqueline Turner Vancouver, Canada Experimental poetry, Collage, Autoconceptual writing www I’m a writer and an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, Canada. My research investigates the role of generous curiosity and relational gratitude in creating conditions for collaboration. My work moves between philosophy, literary criticism, biography, and poetry. Both personal and experimental, my writing seeks transformative forms as it explores memories of growing up in a small town, parenting a set of adventurous sons, travelling, and reading. At times my poems act like micro essays, at other times they are miniature memoirs or precise manifestos, and as they explore the tensions of contemporary cities, a difficult beauty often emerges. My books include: Flourish, The Ends of the Earth, Seven into Even, Careful, and Into the Fold all with ECW Press.

Regina Roze Queretaro, Mexico Writing, Mixed Media, Concrete Poetry www Mexican Philosopher and Multidisciplinary Artist: An Exploration of Language, Trauma, and Oulipian Tradition in Latin American Contexts. Hsuan Chao Kaohsiung, Taiwan Touch-Body Based Interdisciplinary Co-Creating www "Lifelong Unlearning within Body Poetry" Main interests these years surrounded SEX / IMPROVISATION / BODY HISTORY / FAMILY. Keep doubting and questioning how "Professional dance cultivation have transformed me into an "unnormal body. Play and breaking through the limitation of "What is DANCE? in the theatre and also to the public. Experiment Co-create phase with all disciplines artists and perform in mostly non typical space. Collaborated with Kuabo dance theatre and Bare Feet dance theatre in Taiwan, participate in "Forbidden Move! and "The Shed this two pieces as a performer. Discuss the Martial Law period in Taiwan, through the point of view in Sexual Liberation, we embodiment and empower by the popular banned songs back then. In "The Shed we see the distance between Tradition and People nowadays, which have a huge chasm that hard or never reachable today. Finding creative process. Simplicity and pure movement motivation in a way I do not know yet. Creating a Field have plane of equality. Farmdreamingtaiwan, an Arty farm in Taiwan Miaoli created by my Life partner Brian. Hope we can welcome you one day. Shi Jun Gui Shen Zhen, China Video, installation , photography www "Sometimes we forget we are nature itself" Gui Shijun holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University. She currently lives and works in Shenzhen. Her artistic practice spans the boundaries of art, ecology, and sensory experience. Through immersive art practices, she engages with nature, inviting the audience to re-examine ecosystems and living organisms through active participation. Her works emphasize "ecological perception" and "bodily interaction", where she engages in direct contact with forests, plants, and natural environments, fostering a dialogue with nature. In her works, the relationship between humans and nature is transformed into a deep, experiential exchange. Gui’s practice encompasses video, installation, performance, and experience design. Her works have been exhibited at major events such as the Hong Kong Sculpture Biennale, Shenzhen-Hong Kong Design Biennale, and the Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art.

Leslie Wagner New York City, USA Painting, Drawing, Writing www The progression of my artwork began as an interest in human impact on the environment as reflected in the impermanence of life, decay and death in my native New York City. Urban ecology and human communities interact in a paradoxical way. This led me to Zen meditation and mind-body associations, including dreams, memory, and energy practices. When painting and writing, I often consider how the organic physical world of the senses converges with the mental world of symbolism through language and emotional expression. Nature offers diverse sensory wisdom. When perceiving the elements, provided is an understanding of aging and the passage of time. I'm deeply curious about mysterious experiences and how this relates to the brain-body connection. Through interacting with people from many cultures, and in multiple fields, and by discussing consciousness and imagination, I hope to discern new paths forward creatively, that encourage and inspire progress and harmony.  Micat Po Manila, Philippines Intuitive art, Painting, Land art www "Micat transmits images intuitively to raise collective consciousness and support healing of all life on Earth." Micat is an intuitive Filipina artist specialising in watercolour. She uses automatic painting – the practice of creating freely without plan or conscious control – to transmit images from realms beyond. Her work is informed by wisdom and guidance from compassionate beings, primarily spirits of nature and ancestors, who she communicates with directly through shamanic trance. By acting as a bridge, she instills her work with the healing energy of beings that she works with; her creations serve as offerings to our wounded world. Micat is currently exploring ceremony as a transformative energetic experience that can shift our consciousness into greater awareness so that we may remember who we truly are at the highest level. Her greatest hope is for the collective to realise that love is infinite and that we are all one. Mercedes McDermott San Francisco, USA Painting, Printmaking www I grew up within walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean. I’m inspired by our connection to the natural world, and to each other. My love for wild places and adventure has led me to experiences as a deckhand on a pilot boat, a wilderness guide, a fine art and documentary photographer, and traveling for a year around the Pacific Rim. I began my artistic exploration through photography, and often use my photographs for painting reference in the studio. During a photography fellowship in 2007 on an island off the coast of Maine, I was inspired to begin painting as a way to convey the unique energy present in each place. In 2024, during an artist residency in Ireland, I continued to explore making inks from foraged materials for use in my painting and experimental printmaking. I’m moved by the beauty, magic and dream-like qualities that exist in everyday moments, and aim to express these feelings and observations through my work. When I’m not creating images, I’m writing songs, and making field recordings both above and below the waterline.

Samuel Kim Sydney, Australia Painting, Drawing, Design www "Creator." Sam, a Korean-Australian artist, born and raised in the vibrant western suburbs of Sydney, has spent the last two decades perfecting his craft. Collaborating with graffiti and street artists as well as multidisciplinary artists, he has cultivated a distinct and original style. His extensive portfolio spans festivals, corporate offices, government councils, and universities. Drawing from his mathematical background and passion for nature and philosophy, Sam creates mesmerising works that explore the themes of logical paradoxes, the Absurd, and the nature of reality through primarily illustrative compositions. With background experience as a youth worker, Sam also dedicates his time to passing on his expertise to the next generation. Sam's unwavering commitment to both his art and his community makes him an authentic advocate for the arts in Western Sydney and beyond. Shawn K. Thompson Montreal, Canada Writing, Embodiment, Media www I am a writer and multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal. My practice — desirepleasure — is an experiment in joy and the bet that desire knows the way. The work moves through writing and its embodiment, not as separate disciplines but as different ways of meeting what is already there. At Arteles I'll be working on To Dwell With, a research-creation project exploring the four elements as a shared language across cultures and centuries. Peoples without contact, separated by oceans and millennia, arrived at the same conclusions about how the world is made. Not because they talked to each other, but because they looked at the same things. This project follows that gesture, curiously, slowly, not to miss what remains of it in us. The method is simple: field recording, photography, looking, walking, writing, sitting still. A practice of attention the way gardeners, mystics and children have always understood it: as the work itself. Tom Gurn Yartapuulti/Port Adelaide, Australia Writing, Poorly-drawn Comics www "Where does play end and art begin? - Agnes Varda" I tend to write about people I meet, things I see, or general happenings both in my life and at large. I love theatre and film and have delved into those mediums from time-to-time, but that's mostly borne in my belief that stories are stories are stories. I know that we are all born storytellers to some degree. Personally, I can't remember to put the bins out or to reply to emails in a timely manner, but if something strange or funny happens I've somehow got every detail down pat for decades. I just try to cultivate that in my work, and have a bit of fun with it. See the list of all the Arteles residents here

May 2026

Way Beyond Program May Joan Benney San Francisco, USA Photography, Mixed Media www My work explores themes of transformation, through an interplay with natural form and metaphor, driven by the personal. My process often begins in taking note of “open spaces” and other areas of interest that I see on my daily commute and coming back to investigate the landscape further. Research into the history of the area, both natural and human made provides another layer through which a project evolves. The history of a place becomes a guide for self reflection. Geographies of memory, environment and identity come together to form allegories of personhood and transformation. Noticing these wild spaces that exist along my commute provides a mirror into my own perceived inner wilds, from there a visual narrative of inquiry begins and its time to set out with my sitter. I see portraiture and figurative art through a post documentary lens, in collaboration with my subject and the lyricism inherent in visual story telling. Seiu Yang Taipei, Taiwan Clay, Worldbuilding, Installation www "I believe everything has a spirit, and i am a vessel through which my creations channel." I am a traveling artist. In 2023, I began a journey moving between artist residencies and temporary studios, learning how to build connection while honoring a nomadic rhythm. Sometimes, i wonder: what am i even doing? my practice usually begins with clay, then moves through a labyrinth of writing, filmmaking, poetry, photography, and found objects. i pull the tower card every other week. memories arrive like clues, and I follow them, opening small portals through psychological introspection and imagination, trying to understand and heal a wound. To me, clay holds a kind of material intelligence. working with it feels like something ancestral, something I come to understand through somatic awareness.

Erik Arazi Buenos Aires, Argentina Drawing www When I am drawing I feel that I am in abstract fields with unlimited possibilities, where mind and body works beyond what language can express. I could say that within my practice I find myself in the place of consciousness that synchronizes with my own breathing, an energetic portal inside my head when I close the eyes, or that inner silent voice listening beyond the nature that surrounds us in the Cosmos. The way I work emerges as a seed of thoughts orbiting intuitively, where my interests are allowing to question myself different aspects of states of perception, contemplation and meditation. I believe in my drawings as reflections towards an act of faith, of the emotional capacity to manifest myself in a way of being present in time and space in this world. Chia-Chun Yeh Taiwan Illustration, Writing, Education www "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." To me, creating is the practice of exploring the unknown. In this ever-changing life, I train myself to be a quiet collector, using my brushes and senses to capture the flickering light within my heart. It is a journey of learning to appreciate every state of being, exactly as it is in the moment. Phoebe Rotter Albany, New York, USA Drawing, Printmaking, Installation www Phoebe Rotter is a multidisciplinary artist living in Albany, NY. Her visual work consists of translucent wall-hung drawings that investigate desire, personal mythology, and body politics. She also works with the Bread & Puppet Theater as a performing artist and puppeteer. Phoebe received her MFA in painting and drawing from SUNY Albany, where her work won the 2023 Distinguished Thesis Award. She also holds an MA in Studio Art from SUNY Albany and a BA in Art History, cum laude, from Kenyon College. Shi Jun Gui Shen Zhen, China Video, installation , photography www "Sometimes we forget we are nature itself" Gui Shijun holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University. She currently lives and works in Shenzhen. Her artistic practice spans the boundaries of art, ecology, and sensory experience. Through immersive art practices, she engages with nature, inviting the audience to re-examine ecosystems and living organisms through active participation. Her works emphasize "ecological perception" and "bodily interaction", where she engages in direct contact with forests, plants, and natural environments, fostering a dialogue with nature. In her works, the relationship between humans and nature is transformed into a deep, experiential exchange. Gui’s practice encompasses video, installation, performance, and experience design. Her works have been exhibited at major events such as the Hong Kong Sculpture Biennale, Shenzhen-Hong Kong Design Biennale, and the Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art.

Ruth Saunders San Francisco, USA Photography, Performing Arts, Creative Writing Growing up on a farm in rural Alabama, I developed a passion for nature, art and photography at an early age. For the past 30 years I have lived in San Francisco, building a successful career in the entertainment industry. I’m fortunate to have led and/or collaborated with countless talented crews including the San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Opera, ACT-SF, and San Francisco Symphony. The opportunity for international travel arose from managing corporate events for clients such as Apple, Facebook, OpenStack and Toyota. I’ve worked on live action movies and television shows. My work as a camera assist on stop-motion animated children’s programs was most rewarding. Another highlight was touring with Barry Humphries as we spread the joy that is Dame Edna Everage across the United States and Canada, with a Broadway run and an Australian tour to boot. Throughout this time, I have continued to capture and create images, often adding poetic words. I love exploring new mediums and work diligently to keep my mind and heart open to life’s practical, spiritual and emotional lessons. Nathalia Pereira Vredeveld Brussels, Belgium Geography, Writing, Research www I am a geographer and a massage therapist. I’m developing a transdisciplinary practice with a research-oriented methodology. At its core is a thought experiment I have developed called The Weightless Society, through which I look at space as a place and explore how our beliefs are shaped by the earthly condition of gravity. Another key aspect of my practice is embodied research: I am particularly interested in the spatial dimensions of emotion, questioning whether emotions can be located and mapped within the body. My practice moves between writing, cartography, visual experimentation, and embodied research. Over time, these different forms are brought together in hybrid essays in which text, image, and moving material converge. Mercedes McDermott San Francisco, USA Painting, Printmaking www I grew up within walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean. I’m inspired by our connection to the natural world, and to each other. My love for wild places and adventure has led me to experiences as a deckhand on a pilot boat, a wilderness guide, a fine art and documentary photographer, and traveling for a year around the Pacific Rim. I began my artistic exploration through photography, and often use my photographs for painting reference in the studio. During a photography fellowship in 2007 on an island off the coast of Maine, I was inspired to begin painting as a way to convey the unique energy present in each place. In 2024, during an artist residency in Ireland, I continued to explore making inks from foraged materials for use in my painting and experimental printmaking. I’m moved by the beauty, magic and dream-like qualities that exist in everyday moments, and aim to express these feelings and observations through my work. When I’m not creating images, I’m writing songs, and making field recordings both above and below the waterline.

Efrat Lotenberg Israel Sound, Performance, Video www "There is a moment in creation that can only be felt. A simple knowing." My work moves between sound, presence, and states of awareness. Working across voice, performance, and video, I explore how perception shifts through attention, listening, and embodied experience. I am drawn to the subtle spaces where inner and outer landscapes meet, where something begins to unfold beyond language. Nature is an essential collaborator in my work. I engage with environments as living fields, using sound, voice, and image to trace relationships between body, mind, and place. Alongside my individual practice, I value shared processes and encounters that open new perspectives and ways of sensing. I approach art as an ongoing exploration, a way to sense, to listen, and to move toward what is not yet known. Jasper van Aarle Tilburg, Netherlands Sculpture, Drawing, Installation www When the global landscape seems to be at the mercy of its own turbulence, it is essential to stay attentive to the most meaningful aspects of life. Aside from walking, studying, and spending time with loved ones, I find fulfilment and a deeper understanding of our place in the world through working with sculpture and drawing. Much of what I do stems from a desire to grasp metaphysical ideas and expand on our ever-evolving views thereof. As I figure out these ontological principles for myself in a visual and spatial manner, I also aim to create new opportunities that reveal — or at least allow us to sense — the ways in which the phenomenal world comes into being. By elaborating on the interplay between imagination and experience, I want to invite others into a revitalising worldview that perceives reality and its myriad qualities, meanings, and characteristics as one unfolding process of becoming. Since, time and again, artistic practice reminds me of our profound role in the greater expression of Nature as a self-discovering whole. Manuela Pecorari UK / Italy Performance making, Research, Video www My practice encompasses multiple disciplines, from the exploration of the body through somatic practices, to paper with line and colour, to the tactile surface of textile. From the core of the inner dialogue to the relationship with the world. The work has its roots in theatre-making practice but has found nourishment in multiple soil: art history, feminist thinking, Yoga tradition, performance studies, spiritual ecology, post-humanist theory. I am interested of themes of memory, interaction, the marks left from our bodies, on our bodies, on others. The mediation between a here-now and an elsewhere-elsewhen. Home and family, found and born within. I believe my investigation on the meaning as a creature on this Earth can be boiled down to the search for the secret third thing: something that is generated when two entities enter in conversation. See the list of all the Arteles residents here

April 2026

Way Beyond Program April Priyanka Pulijal Los Angeles, USA Painting, Drawing, Installation www "My work builds imagined realms where mythology and lived experience intersect." I am a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in painting and research-led visual inquiry. My ongoing series LOKAS draws from Vedic cosmology and metaphysical frameworks to examine how unseen systems (spiritual, psychological, and mythological) shape identity and lived experience. Using large-scale acrylic paintings, I build imagined realms that function as portals rather than representations. Each work explores a specific “Loka,” or world, operating between the symbolic and the emotional. My process is iterative and accumulative, using repetition, layering, and fragmentation to allow forms and meanings to shift over time. Research plays a central role in my practice, but intuition guides execution. I am interested in the tension between structure and surrender, devotion and desire, ancient cosmologies and contemporary consciousness. Working in series allows me to treat painting as a sustained inquiry rather than a singular gesture. Through this work, I aim to create immersive visual spaces that invite viewers to reflect on their own position within larger, often invisible systems. Shiza Saqib Karachi, Pakistan Drawing, Embroidery, Painting www "Movement and meditation through art-making." In my work, I explore the synergy between self-exploration and the creative process, weaving together my Eastern roots, Sufi literature, and experience as a yoga teacher. My work is an extension of my daily practices of presence and persistence. The breath, the stillness of meditation, and the rhythm of long-distance running inform the cadence of my creative process. I create through intuition, a felt sense that flows through me and takes form on the canvas. Central to my practice is the pursuit of a flow state through intuitive movement and repetition. I allow my pen to guide my hand, and I follow the energy of the lines and the movement of the colours as I create. My process is both meditative and investigative, exploring how slowness and somatic awareness shape the act of making. These works invite pause, offering a visual rhythm that harmonises with the viewer’s tempo of stillness and motion. Ultimately, my work serves as an offering against the cult of speed, inviting us back to the one thing we know to be true - the present moment

Anna Liatkouskaya Minsk, Belarus Drawing, Painting, Poetry www "The river flows within you." I am an artist, a poet and an explorer, considering life itself as the greatest of art forms. After several years of working as a UX designer, discovering and creating interaction patterns between a human and a machine, I have come back to what matters most to me: interactions between humans, between the world outside of one's own mind and the one within. In the age when the digital has become the default, how can we come back to the present, the real, the physical? To smell, to touch, to see, to breathe - those are the experiences we are taking for granted, but they are the most real and raw points of connection with the world, the perception of it. Not through the screen, but through the skin. Not with the eyes, but with the heart. Through my creative practice I hope to tap into my intuition, attempt to transcend the boundaries placed on my mind and to come back to the core within. Megan Peck Shub New York, USA Fiction www I am a writer, critic, and a producer who has won Emmy and Peabody awards for my work on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the HBO satire series. Currently based in Seoul, Korea, I am working on a novel. Shi Jun Gui Shen Zhen, China Video, installation , photography www "Sometimes we forget we are nature itself" Gui Shijun holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from Hong Kong Baptist University. She currently lives and works in Shenzhen. Her artistic practice spans the boundaries of art, ecology, and sensory experience. Through immersive art practices, she engages with nature, inviting the audience to re-examine ecosystems and living organisms through active participation. Her works emphasize "ecological perception" and "bodily interaction", where she engages in direct contact with forests, plants, and natural environments, fostering a dialogue with nature. In her works, the relationship between humans and nature is transformed into a deep, experiential exchange. Gui’s practice encompasses video, installation, performance, and experience design. Her works have been exhibited at major events such as the Hong Kong Sculpture Biennale, Shenzhen-Hong Kong Design Biennale, and the Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art.

Lies Daenen Leuven, Belgium Mixed Media, Painting, Installation www "The fragility of existence reveals the mystery of the soul" Working at the intersection of art and ritual practice, I question the anthropocentric worldview and evoke a universe in which all life is equal and interconnected — in right relation. With delicate mixed media works on paper, paintings, installations and interactive projects, I try to bring forth this soulful universe. In my work with trees and other natural beings, I like to invite viewers and participants to experience a renewed, empathic, relationship with nature. This relationship is meant to function as a foundation for personal and collective healing — for and with each other, and the earth. Nicholas Bustos New York, USA Music, Neuroscience, Video www Hi, I’m Nico. I’m a neuroscientist based in Brooklyn, NY, whose work sits at the intersection of reward learning, cognition, and translational psychiatry. My research focuses on developing biomarkers and precision medicine approaches to better understand the computational underpinnings of human experience — the internal cogs and pulleys that orchestrate behavior, emotion, and consciousness. Drawn to the immediate power of sound to shape mood and sculpt brain states, I find myself equally at home in a jazz club, a techno set, or a forest full of birdsong. I’m an avid cyclist and hiker, and an experimental cook. At Arteles, I will develop audiovisual works that render the emergent behavior of neural networks visible, translating the hidden architecture of the mind into sensory experience. Sakurako Oidaira Japan Drawing www My work primarily focuses on line drawings. I’m interested in the boundaries between sound, letters, patterns, and images. I’m fascinated by the inclusiveness of the act of drawing lines itself, as it connects to the activities of nature and living things. While it's difficult to definitively classify my line drawings as automatism, I believe I started in that direction, at least initially. The process by which playful lines, initially without meaning, gradually acquire characteristics and transform into words or landscapes is incredibly beautiful to me. It's like a journey without a predetermined destination. This aesthetic sense is directly linked to the energy of life. For an artist, immersing oneself in lines is a means that holds the potential to freely move between the invisible and the visible. I believe that for both the viewer and the artist who has regained objectivity, it allows for the rediscovery of small discoveries, the possibility of freedom, and connections to everything.

Stefan Gebhard Koblenz, Germany Performance; Education; Subjectivation Research www "To me, art is a rehearsal space for futures worth fighting for." I am an artist, educator, and researcher at the intersection of aesthetic and political practice. In my artistic research, I am primarily interested in how predictions of the future have a performative effect, that is, how they bring about those very futures they claim to be merely describing, primarily through framing effects. On this basis, I use my art and my facilitation practice to encourage people to envision plural futures worth living for and fighting for. In my more classical academic research, i investigated how the subject position '(Teaching) Artist' as a cooperation partner is performed in school contexts, and what potential such collaborations hold. Tamara Jan Blazevic Croatia / Norway Multimedia Drawing, Digital World-Building, Speculative Narrative www "Bridging ancient wisdom and digital realms to inspire a global shift toward creativity and peace." I am a multimedia artist and writer whose practice is a lifelong exploration of consciousness, inner peace, and the interconnectedness of all beings. Deeply inspired by Vedic culture and the resonance of ancient wisdom, I seek to bridge these timeless foundations with contemporary creative evolution. My work is a call for a global shift—moving away from conflict and towards a primary maxim of creativity, mutual respect, and harmony with nature. My artistic foundation is rooted in the line; it is my primary expressive tool, manifesting through modular compositions and traditional two-dimensional surfaces. However, my current trajectory is evolving toward conceptual and digital realms. I am drawn to the limitless potential of digital environments and immersive world-building, where I can transcend material constraints and explore the boundless nature of the mind. For me, art is a meditative process of transformation—an invitation to reveal the hidden dimensions of our existence and foster a deeper harmony within the universe. Manuela Pecorari UK / Italy Performance making, Research, Video www My practice encompasses multiple disciplines, from the exploration of the body through somatic practices, to paper with line and colour, to the tactile surface of textile. From the core of the inner dialogue to the relationship with the world. The work has its roots in theatre-making practice but has found nourishment in multiple soil: art history, feminist thinking, Yoga tradition, performance studies, spiritual ecology, post-humanist theory. I am interested of themes of memory, interaction, the marks left from our bodies, on our bodies, on others. The mediation between a here-now and an elsewhere-elsewhen. Home and family, found and born within. I believe my investigation on the meaning as a creature on this Earth can be boiled down to the search for the secret third thing: something that is generated when two entities enter in conversation. See the list of all the Arteles residents here

March 2026

Silence Awareness Existence Program March Bethany Anderson Seattle, Washington, USA Healing Arts, Modern Ritual Practices, Voice www "I work at the intersection of intuition, ritual, and the divine rite of return through pause and creative witnessing." I'm a spiritual strategist, a healer of thresholds, and a creator of ritualistic pathways to help women reclaim their power through pause and self-retrieval. In the moments a woman chooses herself again. Through writing, podcasting, and leading intuitive offerings for modern devotion, I explore how silence isn’t empty, but full of messages. During this residency, I’ll use silence as my medium to develop new voice and writing materia, and to deepen the architecture of my ritual frameworks. Nature is essential to my process. It teaches me to trust the wild rhythm of life itself, how even disarray holds rhythm and design. My practice is devotional, integrative, and cyclical. With voice, written word, and presence, I aim to build portals for others to return home to themselves. Jessica Rowe Fallon, Nevada, USA Poetry, Creative Non-Fiction, Illustration Jessica Rowe is a poet and creative non-fiction writer who has taught writing in rural Nevada and her native Idaho for more than 20 years. She holds an M.A. in English/Linguistics from the University of Idaho, and two degrees in Fine Arts with an emphasis in illustration and textiles. A former Fulbright Scholar to Romania, she has devoted her career to mentoring student writers and exploring the boundaries of language. This year, she received a sabbatical from her position as a tenured professor at Western Nevada College to complete a poetry manuscript examining the stickiness of complex grief, motherhood, and caregiving through terminal illness. The book centers on memories of her mother, a hard-working rancher who lived in close relationship with the landscape where she was raised and who died young of ovarian cancer. In this winter residency at Arteles, Jessica is looking to do the deep work that goes on beneath what is seen and active on the surface. In this darker, quieter time, she is looking to pause, revise, and to create in inspiration with the natural world around her.

I-Chien Wu Taipei, Taiwan Oil painting, Collage art, Intallation art www "An educational, environmentlly focusd artist." I was an art teacher, and I have over 10 years of experiences in artistic creation. Most of my artworks are oil painting, installation and collage art. I like to use readymade material to express subjects I am interesting to. I concerned about our environment. The problem of wasting resources is getting worse. While people enjoy the convenience brought by modern life, they also produce waste. My artistic practice focuses on the issue of medical resource waste. I collected expired medicine on my artwork. I tried to tell people to cherish our medical resources. People in nowadays become more and more depend on the internet. We get information of outside world by internet. But some time we get information passively which we don’t actual need. Data smug is a disaster in modern life. It brings convenience but also spoil our simple life at the same time. I collected disposable paper to make a large collage art. I lined this material horizontally like the way webpage display just to remind people get off the computer and go to see our real beautiful world. Marina Castledine Cyprus / UK Writing, Photography, Socially Engaged Practice Marina is a lover of hope and hospitality, of generating foundations for new dreams. She is a mixed heritage socially engaged producer, with senior experience of designing, leading and evaluating creative programmes. She specialises in supporting vulnerable young people and fractured communities. She has worked across the UK to generate multi artform responses in partnership with artists, councils, charities, galleries and museums, including as Head of Learning at Towner and National Manager at Tate. Previously, she developed arts qualifications which are still achieved by thousands of children and young people annually. Currently she is completing a Techné AHRC funded PhD, investigating silence as resistance through living heritage. Marina is seeking to write a book based on her experience. Amanda Ortiz San Francisco, USA Design, illustration, painting www Hii! I’m an illustrator and multidisciplinary ~emerging~ artist based in San Francisco, California. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with art and often find myself searching for that magical, uninhibited creative flow and pure curiosity I had as a child, before the world felt heavy and I learned how to fit inside a box. After spending the last 10+ years working as a graphic designer in corporate (if you know, you know), I’m now on a journey back to Art as a personal and spiritual practice. I’m still developing my style and voice, so I’m coming to Arteles to turn inward and reflect on how I want to move forward as an artist. I’m excited to slow down, let my intuition speak, and see what naturally emerges in the quiet. A few of my joys outside the studio include wildlife rescue, film photography, meditation, beaded jewelry, fostering dogs, and photosynthesizing outdoors.

Marjee Chmiel USA / Poland Literature, speculative fiction, comics, documentary film www "Storytelling and strangeness through literature, comics, and documentary" My passion resides in feminist horror and near-future, “soft” science fiction. As a neurodivergent writer, daughter of immigrants, and lapsed Catholic, I live askew from dominant narratives: decoding systems and structures that feel just out of reach. Fiction, with its metaphors made literal, is how I navigate the world. It lets me reframe what neurotypical culture pathologizes as disorientation or obsession into insight, prophecy, and radical imagination. My recent creative questions revolve around Cassandra themes and the isolating sense of seeing what others won’t acknowledge. I have navigated various institutions where powerful people “look away” from internal rot and existential dangers. These flawed institutions are crumbling, but what happens when they vanish? A complicated grief and anxiety drives my work. Narrative is the alchemy that transmutes such complications into hope. Laurel Karjala Canada Visual Arts, Painting www I am a visual artist, a painter based on Vancouver Island in British Columbia Canada. In my practice I explore the concept of liminality in nature and how it can be represented through painting. Liminality (from the Latin “limen”) can be characterized as transforming from one state to another or a capturing of in-between situations and conditions. What captivates me is the state of in-between. It is the place where past and future are not fully resolved and it is a place where we can seek answers to complex questions while allowing new ideas to challenge us. In the flow of transformation, it is the place where there are opportunities to inquire, contemplate and take creative action. In-between is where we can move through ambiguity and noise to reach clarity and understanding. When I step into a landscape, I marvel at the beauty of transformational, in-between places: dawn where day begins, mid-day where the sun reaches its apex, dusk where light lingers on the horizon and mid-night where sunlight is hidden and starlight pushes against the dark. Manuela Pecorari UK / Italy Performance making, Research, Video www My practice encompasses multiple disciplines, from the exploration of the body through somatic practices, to paper with line and colour, to the tactile surface of textile. From the core of the inner dialogue to the relationship with the world. The work has its roots in theatre-making practice but has found nourishment in multiple soil: art history, feminist thinking, Yoga tradition, performance studies, spiritual ecology, post-humanist theory. I am interested of themes of memory, interaction, the marks left from our bodies, on our bodies, on others. The mediation between a here-now and an elsewhere-elsewhen. Home and family, found and born within. I believe my investigation on the meaning as a creature on this Earth can be boiled down to the search for the secret third thing: something that is generated when two entities enter in conversation.

Alan Johnson New York, USA Music, Concert Programming, Performance www Alan Johnson is a New York/Minneapolis based pianist/music director and Professor Emeritus from the University of Miami whose collaborative work with renowned American composers and multi-disciplinary artists has long been at the frontiers of new opera, song, theater, and dance. Current and recent creative engagement includes poetry-driven immersive song projects, thematically designed programs, novel singer/pianist performance relationships, composer retrospective concert production and recordings. Nicolasa Marin Bogota, Colombia Writing www My work is a game of catching my own tail: through poetry I try to capture the things that move me but resist language. I want to be a medium for creatures and landscapes I have only seen in my imagination, for stories that fascinate me in that mumbling voice writing itself uses as it moves through us. I write essays to honor and channel the tradition that came before me; the great masters of imagination who must be read again and again because they guard gifts that shapeshift for each reader. I also write poems and fiction as a way of reaching toward them, to see whether their presence might briefly inhabit my language, giving me a spare verse that escaped them in life. At Arteles, I hope to enter into silence, trusting that the things I see and hear will become more vivid. Nicole Linda Gadon USA Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Mixed Media www I have felt a strong connection to nature since I was a small child. As an adult, besides the natural world, I have been inspired by art history and the belief systems of different peoples, especially those of preliterate cultures. I question how these beliefs are reflected in the objects that a culture has behind. We need to redefine our relationship to animals, plants and the entire planet if we are going to survive as a species. What can we learn from past world views? Art enables me to feel part of a greater life force, to be centered. My work is process oriented. I often use historical techniques involving repetitive mark making, such as egg tempera or pen and ink. Lately I have begun to experiment with watercolors and mono-prints, which leave more to the unexpected. Sometimes I am simply reacting to the beauty I see around me. Other times through intuitive, poetic juxtapositions, I try to communicate fears and hopes and to stimulate the viewer to think in new ways about what it means to be human. Whatever the goal and the media, I make art to give my life meaning. See the list of all the Arteles residents here

february 2026

Silence Awareness Existence Program February Linda Price-Sneddon Pittsburgh, PA, USA Painting, Video Installation www "Art that compels folk to slow down, observe and think is truly subversive in this instant gratification attention economy." I'm deeply intrigued by the relationship between landscape and psyche. As living beings, we are shaped by the lands where we are born and live. As creatures of language, we imbue the land with emotional and symbolic meaning—whether it's a spectacular sunrise, a brooding sky, or a majestic mountain. My work explores the ways landscape reflects our inner lives. Liminality—a threshold between two conditions or states of being—is central to my practice as I explore the space between binaries. I think of my work as existing in a liminal space between waking and dreaming, a place where forms emerge and dissolve. Motifs of mountain, water, and cloud become emblems for my exploration of Form/Formlessness, Time/Timelessness, Stasis/Flux. My oil paintings are inspired by nature's forms, rhythms, and patterns, both macro and micro. Through layered color relationships, I explore color as energy, color as flux. I work with the emergent physics of paint—color embodied—to evoke the visceral experience of encountering both our physical and emotional worlds. Ultimately, my work invites an attentive form of seeing—one that might extend into how we encounter the world beyond the artwork. Nahelli Chavoya Guadalajara, Mexico / Ireland Poetry, Dance, Installation art www I am a poet who creates through movement. Mainly through walks in nature, dancing, and a slow contemplation of movement, where I can connect with the different times that inhabit a place. I am a poet who constantly loses language, and collects in her body many unuttered poems, and sometimes makes a house for them to share them with others: art, words, dances. Sometimes they visit. Mieke Loubser Cape Town, South Africa Drawing, Painting, Text-based art www My name is Mieke and I’m a multidisciplinary creative and freelancer based in Cape Town, South Africa. I grew up in a small desert town in Namibia, but moved to the city in 2008 and have been there ever since. In 2017, I was awarded my BA in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town, where I majored in painting, and in 2021 I received my BA Hons in Visual Arts Illustration from the University of Stellenbosch. I currently work as wardrobe stylist and fashion assistant in Cape Town's film and television industry, but have begun to re-prioritize my practice with the intention of returning it it full time. I am endeavouring to reconnect with my creative voice and through this, deepen my understanding of myself as an artist, a painter, a poet and a person.

Marc Schmidt Netherlands Film, Writing, Academic Research www My work is rooted in an interest in consciousness: how we perceive the world around us and our place within it. In this, I seek the intersection where abstract ideas take shape in lived reality. Film is my main way of entering that space. In my documentary films, I explore mental states in their full intimacy, and reflect on them: a friend struggling with autism and the external world (Matthew’s Laws), the possibility of understanding another species (The Chimpanzee Complex), and, in my most personal work yet, the fear and attraction of emptiness (How to Disappear Completely). Currently, my practice centers on the perception of time: how it stretches, fractures, or dissolves in different mental states. Through doctoral research on the narrative structures of psychotic experiences, and through the development of a new film on trauma and dissociation, I search for forms that can hold experiences that slip beyond linearity. How do stories take shape when time itself begins to falter? Warren Ward Mullumbimby, Australia Writing, Literature, Cultural History www "Writing about European cultural history" I am a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who writes about philosophy and cultural history. My first book, Lovers of Philosophy, explored how the love lives of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault and Derrida shaped their ideas. My second book, Salonnières, traces the history of the literary salon in Europe, and the role played by progenitors such as George Sand, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf. On this visit to Arteles, I'll be working on my third book, Quantum Love, which explores the love lives of seven theoretical physicists including Curie, Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg. In this work I'll be contemplating the interplay between so-called inanimate objects (protons, electrons, quarks) and animate phenomena such as consciousness and desire. I am fascinated by the way ideas evolve, whether these ideas are scientific, philosophical, theological or literary. I also love reading and writing about art and the history of art. Philosophically, I am drawn to the more creative and iconoclastic thinkers of the continental tradition. I also love playing music, immersing myself in nature and exploring somatic experiences such as sauna, cold water, yoga and breath work. Rona Figueroa New York, USA Acting, Singing, Songwriting, Writing www "Living with a song in my heart" I'm an actor, singer, songwriter, writer, visual artist. In everything I do, I aim for joy, playfulness and collaboration. As an actor I like tuning into what an audience brings to the room, including their rhythms and sensitivities with the play onstage, then tailoring my rhythms in response so that we are all alive and in sync together, in a constant dance of giving and receiving. As a songwriter, writer and visual artist, dreams are often my co-creator, and as such have taught me to forgo superficial expectations, to allow the mundane and seemingly easy conclusions. Dreams gift gems too: plot twists, unique wordplay, sublime visuals. Hi or lo-fi, dreams always surprise. In all cases, I am a reed, happy to serve the story, the song, and images that want to manifest. I am reminded that the creative force is channelled from beyond myself. Likewise, cultivating dialogue with the community, visible and invisible, makes me feel integrated with the big, big picture.

Puja Nandi London, UK Writing Puja is a writer, DJ and public law lawyer. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2024 and has had other short stories published in Chicken + Bread Magazine. She also writes about music and film, with work published in The Quietus, Filmhounds Magazine and The Line of Best Fit. In her creative writing, Puja delves into emotional inheritance and cross-cultural, intergenerational narrative. She is interested in why individual experiences of small everyday moments can be so different, yet unifying, and how the constructed environment can shape our inner and outer worlds. She is currently exploring British and Indian folktales and myths in her short screenplays. During her residency at Arteles, she is looking forward to being in nature and taking inspiration it. She hopes to reconnect to its spiritual aspects to see how this flows into her writing. Yi-Shuan Wu Taipei, Taiwan Painting www Hi,I am Yi-Shuan Wu, a painter from Taipei, Taiwan. In 2017, I enrolled at the the master’s program in Japanese Painting at Tama Art University in Tokyo, Japan. I use mineral pigments, ink, and gold or silver leaves to capture the shifting light and shadows, to portray emotions and warmth through depictions of animals, plants, and landscapes. I am drawn to the beauty of life’s simple but precious moments, the feelings of joy, happiness, inner peace, and hope. I enjoy observing people, how they develop relationships, how they show their emotions. I love observing nature, the changing of seasons, the different expressions of light. Matt Sears New York, USA Photography, Interdisciplinary Sculpture www Matt Sears is an interdisciplinary artist, fabricator, and craftsman based in Brooklyn, NY. Encompassing photography and sculpture his work explores collective time, the limits of memory, and impermanence. Utilizing analog and custom experimental photographic techniques, images range from months long exposures tracking the arc of the sun over the course of a year to returning to the same subject at different periods, capturing temporal durations inaccessible to direct experience. He approaches photography with an emphasis not toward a singular image or document but as a collection of gestures, which in their relation to one another create a displacement of the commonplace, to wrest the familiar in order to see things anew in the service of larger narratives.

Eliza McKenna Woodstock, USA Photography, Sculpture, Film & Video www "Eliza is a mystic and artist using photography to expand human perception." Eliza McKenna (b. 1997, Woodstock, NY) is an artist and mystic based in New York's Hudson Valley. Her work moves between photography, writing, and experimental materials to explore grief, memory, and consciousness within and beyond the body. She is interested in the image’s potential to uncover our thoughts, feelings, and unconscious beliefs. Eliza works within an idealist paradigm in which consciousness exists as the underlying reality of all physical form. Her practice is rooted in a desire to build visual systems for organizing her connection to this fundamental Source energy and to bring to light the ways art can expand human perception. Eliza holds a BA in Film Studies from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute. Erin Nichols Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia Pedagogy, Mixed-Media, Writing www Dr. Erin Nichols is a postqualitative researcher and philosopher of movement whose work explores the intersections of embodiment, feminist theory, and the cultural mediation of sportswomen. Working with affect theory and feminist new materialist approaches, she is interested in how contact and fight sports can create a “shock to thought,” care-fully mobilising kinetic excess as a force for (un)learning and re-imagining vulnerability, and becoming-otherwise. Her practice attends to the aesthetics of sensation, how bodies feel, move, and make meaning through intensity, rhythm, and relationality. Erin’s dedication to the creative-critical potential of an interdisciplinary approach seeks to challenge existing paradigms and coaching pedagogies, and contribute to more nuanced understandings of gender, embodiment, and sport. Erin lives on the unceded lands of the land of the Yugarabul, Yuggera, Jagera and Turrabal Peoples. Dirk Bahmann South Africa Sculpture, installation, architecture Dirk is a Johannesburg based South African visual artist, architect, and lecturer, and a doctoral candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand. Working across sculpture and spatial installation, his research investigates how atmospheres; the felt tonalities of space, shape perception, attachment, and meaning. He is particularly concerned with numinous affect, moments when places and spaces become charged with a thick sense of presence. His work aims to make intangible spatial qualities tangible and discussable, positioning atmosphere as a site of artistic, architectural, and pedagogical practice. His practice takes form through staged sculptural assemblages, spatial maquettes, and immersive installations that use material, form, and light to render atmosphere perceptible. Informed by posthumanist philosophy, his practice is grounded in iterative, hands on making as a form of inquiry and a dialogical way of working alongside materials, sites, and places. His methodology emphasizes slowness, deep listening, and sustained relation building, guided by an ethic of care toward the more than human ecologies with which he collaborates. See the list of all the Arteles residents here

January 2026

Silence Awareness Existence Program January Vincent Corrèze France Painting, Drawing, Poetry www Vincent Corrèze is a French artist who explores identity through portraits of a humanity that is both primitive and symbolic. Every detail is meant to blur the boundaries between dreams and reality: totemic faces, extravagant features, esoteric symbols and excessive colours. Creatures of fragile beauty and despair, the faces and figures depicted in his work are often altered by symbols or chromatics wounds. The mask as a societal identity is an important focus of his work. His paintings hold up a mirror to the conscious and its forgotten place in our society. His work features natural, unprocessed, almost organic material. Working with formal essentials allows him to engage the emotional perception at the deepest level and establish the fundamentals of his research. He seeks to create self-conscious works unspoiled by excessive rationalization and standardization. Corey Tazmania New York, USA Performance, Pedagogy www Corey is an actor, movement and intimacy director, and educator in the field of theatrical performance. Her applied research focuses on developing new pathways and strategies for maintaining and supporting the theatrical artist’s well-being while in the collaborative creation and performance process. Pauline Nolan Australia Painting Just completing my BFA, majoring in painting. I mostly use oils on canvas. My current focus is : Guiding Lights. I integrate research on Lighthouses, spiritual messages, meditation and Psychology. I aim for an immersive experience for the viewer that conveys a sense of peace.

Jessi Phillips USA Fiction Writing www I’m a writer, musician, and journalist who splits time between California and Michigan. I’ve released three records under the moniker Eight Belles and worked as a reporter for an NPR station, and I’m working on a novel about a multi-generational family musical group. My work focuses on connections to ancestry and place, and the way our identities are influenced by those connections. Anne Jackson Canada Oil painting www Colour has always been at the heart of my creative vision. Following the oil glazing techniques developed by Netherlandish masters of centuries ago, I use multiple thin layers of transparent oil colour to create a luminous depth in my minimalist abstract paintings. The indirect painting approach requires time, patience, and close attention, a process that I find to be a form of meditation in itself. I become fully absorbed in what I am doing and the rest of the world falls away.  A love of rich colour and especially deep darks contribute to the sense of stillness, intensity, and mystery of my creative work. I love to paint, read, cycle, hike, travel, spend time in beautiful spaces whether they be natural or created, to share with loved ones, and to explore. Sev Gedra New York, USA Embroidery, Sculpture, Painting www "Sev Gedra is an artist exploring the connection between craft techniques and intergenerational conversations." I am an artist, fabricator, and craftswoman interested in the parallels between craft techniques and intergenerational conversations. Through densely beaded sculptures, often wearable, I address themes of intergenerational dialogue and ancestral trauma. I use embroidery as a visual metaphor for how we mend generational rifts and rebuild our familial fabric or when we choose to allow those relationships to fray. Using historical techniques and visual references, I incorporate a range of material including everything from beads and bones to amber and inherited linen to illustrate a nuanced narrative about reframing legacy. Each material holds deep symbolic significance and each stitch could be interpreted as representing ancestral interactions or memory or a decision to break traditions that no longer serve.

Olivia Chung Australia Poetry, Prose, Mixed-media www Liv Chung is a Chinese-Australian poet, writer and clinical psychologist living on unceded Wurundjeri land. Her practice navigates the interstitial spaces between art, science, culture and philosophy, exploring the paradoxical tensions and existential questions of what it means to be human with privileged and marginalised identities in a time of unprecedented systems growth and collapse. She writes as an act of solidarity, resistance and reconnection to her human and more-than-human kin. Leonie Bradbury Netherlands / USA Curating, Writing, Thinking through art www "Bradbury’s current research interests include the agency of objects, speculative futurism and the archival gesture in contemporary art." Dr. Leonie Bradbury is an artist-philosopher and curator of contemporary art living in Beverly, MA, USA. Bradbury has years of experience creating compelling and innovative exhibitions and promoting artists as thought leaders. She currently serves as the Henry and Lois Foster Chair in Contemporary Art Theory and Practice and Distinguished Curator-in-Residence at Emerson College in Boston. At Emerson, she directs their platform for visual art “Emerson Contemporary” focused on presenting moving image works and media art engaged with new and emerging technologies. Bradbury is interested in thinking through the roles art and artists play in society and examining how artistic practice is a form of knowledge production that facilitates discourse and elicits empathy. Her current research interests include the agency of objects, speculative futurism and the archival gesture in contemporary art. She enjoys engaging in deep conversation about art, science, nature, and philosophy to explore and better understand the nature of being in the world. As a secular Buddhist, she practices yoga and mindfulness with a focus on integrating ethics, kindness and compassion in everyday modern life. Leyla Josephine Glasgow, UK Poetry, Film, Performance www "What could possibly be more important than play, pain and pleasure." Leyla Josephine is a poet, performance artist and film maker. She's fascinated with identity, power dynamics within relationships, nature and creativity as a spiritual practice. Her first poetry collection In Public/In Private contained Forward Prize 2024 winning poem Dear John Berger. Her performance work Daddy Drag won Autopsy Award 2019. Her short film Groom was nominated for Scottish Bafta and Critics Circle Award 2023. Her YA play Ms Campbell's Class Fourth Period was performed globally as part of Wonderfools Positive Stories for Negative Times. She's currently working on two feature film scripts and a new poetry collection which will be her main focus while at Arteles. Her time at Arteles is funded by Creative Scotland.

Dirk Bahmann South Africa Sculpture, installation, architecture Dirk is a Johannesburg based South African visual artist, architect, and lecturer, and a doctoral candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand. Working across sculpture and spatial installation, his research investigates how atmospheres; the felt tonalities of space, shape perception, attachment, and meaning. He is particularly concerned with numinous affect, moments when places and spaces become charged with a thick sense of presence. His work aims to make intangible spatial qualities tangible and discussable, positioning atmosphere as a site of artistic, architectural, and pedagogical practice. His practice takes form through staged sculptural assemblages, spatial maquettes, and immersive installations that use material, form, and light to render atmosphere perceptible. Informed by posthumanist philosophy, his practice is grounded in iterative, hands on making as a form of inquiry and a dialogical way of working alongside materials, sites, and places. His methodology emphasizes slowness, deep listening, and sustained relation building, guided by an ethic of care toward the more than human ecologies with which he collaborates. Kalina Kostova Berlin, Germany Drawing, Painting, Writing www "In the sea of ​​individualism, only one’s own dissolution is a path to naturalness" Kalina Kostova (*1997, Munich) is a versatile artist and author based in Berlin, renowned for her painting within the international art scene. Her work is characterized by a profound engagement with philosophical and existential themes. Kostova explores fundamental questions of life, such as the impact of nature, pain, love, and the inevitability of transience. She frequently contrasts contemporary, performance-driven society with the instinctual needs of individuals. Currently, she is working on a philosophical book that fuses text and visual art, comprising over 100 pages. Her approach combines surrealistic and symbolic elements that often reflect inner experiences and human relationships. Kostova has participated in prestigious exhibitions, including her recent showcase at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris during the Artshopping fair. Her artistic practice involves a scientific approach to depict complex emotions and observations from nature convincingly. Through her art, she aims to establish a deeper connection between viewers and their surroundings by making the invisible visible, inviting reflection on our shared human experiences. Seiu Yang Taipei, Taiwan Ceramics, Installation, Worldbuilding www "i am a diasporic ghost." between places and temporalities, my art emerges through fragments of clay, words, and worldbuilding as intertwined materials. the spaces i inhabit are thresholds made of memory, body, and overlapping time; cellular memory becomes atmospheric, and emotion turns physical, like stars penetrating porcelain. i am an autistic nomadic artist. each residency, every dwelling, is a calibration of gravity. i measure time in firings and soil texture that reshapes my nervous system. i build realms that study belonging with the distance of forest, volcanic shore, or city studio, each becoming another constellation orbiting the question of home. my spirit ghosties are particles of metamorphosis, tiny portals through which inner-child memory translates itself into collective myth. when i sculpt, i listen to clay as dark matter, revealing in frequencies only tenderness can detect. lastly, i am a quantum storyteller. my art travels between dimensions of care. each gesture, cracks embodied, rewrites the equation of shame and trauma through alchemy. i infuse every vessel with the data of healing: what i learn from my body’s rhythm, from the autistic logic of sensitivity, and from the fluctuating economies of energy and trust. See the list of all the Arteles residents here