Archive

15 Mar

Posted at 19:39h in
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Berene Campbell researched the invisible labour of rural women and their role in sustaining community life. As the outcome of this project, Berene produced "The Work of Women keeps a Community united"—a collaborative textile piece created with local women, celebrating their unrecognised contributions to the village. Berene worked closely with the women of Messejana over several weeks, gathering stories, techniques, and fragments of fabric that carry personal and collective memory. The quilt was assembled through shared sessions where traditional sewing knowledge met contemporary artistic practice. The project made visible the care work that often goes unacknowledged—mending, adapting, making comfort for others. By centring the women as collaborators rather than subjects, Berene created a work that belongs as much to them as to her. The quilt remains in Messejana, a permanent trace of this encounter....

19 Oct

Posted at 21:09h in
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Lelia Byron researched and experimented with creative plastic recycling. As the outcome of this project, Lelia produced two outdoor sculptures, titled Plastic Dreams: Sunrise and Sunset , which were installed at a town entrance. The sculptures were made from hundreds of pounds of plastic which she washed, sorted by type and color, shredded, and then molded into hundreds of individual parts with a DIY manual injection machine. Lelia used plastic as a raw material for creative purposes at a small scale, a new and expanding area of research. Plastic has been recycled at an industrial level for decades, but creative plastic recycling is in its early stages. The Precious Plastic Machines of Buinho, which she used to make these sculptures, are an example. They are hand-built with easily found inexpensive parts and simplify industrial processes to recycle plastic....

19 Oct

Posted at 21:03h in
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Mark Rumsey (US) is a visual artist who centers his work on social situations and spatial manipulations. While in Messejana Mark develops a set of prints that are a continuation of a project centered on where nature and the built environment connect, or collide. This set of prints is an exploration of the town of Messejana. The built palette of the town was white, grey, and a bright blue that trimmed the majority of doorways and windows. While working in the ​Creative Residency at Buinho in rural Messejana, Portugal Mark also produced a series of laser-cut images based on the Streets of Messejana. The images explore the relationship between the vernacular architecture of the town, the vast open sky, and points of interjection of modern amenities....

19 Oct

Posted at 20:48h in
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The collective Hypokeimenonic Verses is made up of artist Victoria DeBlassie and writer Connor Maley, and together they scrutiniously examine the intersection between their two respective art practices: visual arts and experimental fiction. This body of work and text explores the history of colonization both done to and by Portugal as represented by its flora. Using source imagery the duo found from the Ethnographic Museum of Messejana, Portugal, DeBlassie laser-cut: images of boats on laminated Bougainvillea petals and watermelon peels; images of Arabic writings on stone tablets onto laminated orange and lemon peels; images of the ocean seen in children’s books onto cantaloupe peels; images of colonial lace patterns onto laminated Bougainvillea petals. Also developed during the residency is a site-specific sundial installation made for the town of Messejana, called "O Sol Nos Tempos", and situated at the Quinta da Cerca. Victoria made the sundial with materials I collected on walks around and in the town and the blue and white colors represent the colors of the buildings...

04 Oct

Posted at 20:55h in
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During my residency in Messejana, Portugal, I have been continuing my experimentations with discarded materials including plastics bags and packaging, broken walls, rust, and fallen debris. I worked on 3 different kinds of pieces. Warp and Weave is an unfolding tapestry still in progress, made from melted white plastic packing materials that held large aluminum siding sections. My piece was composed of woven sections that become warped and irregular as I melt each piece. I have also drawn on them with black paint markers. The unpredictability also reminds me of many of the ruined structures I've seen in Messejana. If Walls Could Talk was a temporary site-specific piece I developed. I collaborated with crumbling walls by putting plastic-covered stones where there are gaps from stones falling out, and to me this piece was a way of really looking closely at decay and also putting the colors of our contemporary pollution for people to wonder and perhaps take a closer look at all of the plastic bits that end up on the side of roads and in our waterways. Rust was a series of explorations with rusted metal I have collected in Messejana by a 16th-century monastery in ruins. I have started to make prints of these findings. I have also made assemblages with rust frameworks and collected plastic bags and packaging materials.  ...

04 Oct

Posted at 20:47h in
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While at the Buinho residency, I worked on a couple of creative projects. Thanks to the beautiful studio space I was given, I was able to work on a couple of large-scale oil paintings and a series of graphite drawings that were part of a body of paintings and drawings I had started earlier in the year inspired by the other artist residencies I had recently attended in Iceland and Greece. The other project that I worked on, with the permission of the Messejana Mayor, was a large mural near one of the entrances of the town welcoming visitors to Messejana  I was inspired by similar murals I had seen in America welcoming visitors to their state or their town. I wanted the sign to reflect some of the colors and local culture so I used the light blue pulled from local house trim and included naturalistic imagery from the landscape....

04 Oct

Posted at 20:42h in
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Rakshita Mittal is a visual artist who generally explores the complexities of the relationships people share with spaces. She has been working as a professional photographer for more than five years and has co-founded a photography and film company called Studio Basic. At the Buinho Residency, Rakshita worked with local elderly women of Messejana to create a body of work around the lives of the women there. The resulting body of works, entitled "Through my Kitchen Window", further explores the kind of roles women of Messejana play at home and in professional spheres. This documentary series is a personal memoir of the artist's interactions with these women, where the photographer, also became an intimate part of their narratives as these women share slices of their lives with her...

04 Oct

Posted at 16:09h in
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Manuela Lopez is a Spanish watercolour artist who developed a project based on the observation and anthropological study of Messejana The main idea behind doing Manuela's work was to interpret the landscape, and the people of Messejana, trying to capture what makes it different as a place, and its history. The first two weeks were dedicated to knowing more about the town´s history and exchanging with local people. From there the artist started to do drawings based on the observations of her surroundings. This ethnographic research resulted in the elaboration of a personal file of works that narrated the stay and her experiences discovering Messejana. It represented a series of personal encounters that Manuela had with some locations while using watercolors, some of those accompanied by the writing of personal notes about them....

04 Oct

Posted at 15:58h in
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This work was the composition project for the residence at Buinho Creative Hub in Messejana, Portugal. It is a work that explores the soundscape as a central format but with a treatment that is developed in a musical way. The field recordings were made in places such as the central plaza, gardens, interiors, bars, and public events, in addition to recording with special interest in elements of nature, machines, objects, and dialogues. Some of these recordings were edited and manipulated using some synthesis tools and digital processes. Sound derivations seek to evoke eurythmy between matter and memory, where atmospheres are articulated and elements propagate resonances in time....

04 Oct

Posted at 15:51h in
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Hannah Berta is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Rockport Maine (US). Hannah works with paper, paint, and sculpture. Her work is often a mixture of these mediums and focuses on topics of environmental awareness, relationships & self-reflection. With intent, attention to detail, and care, Hannah transforms simple materials into complex, detailed works. She hopes to inspire others to use simple materials to create everyday magic. During her residency in Buinho Hannah was introduced to the potentialities of digital fabrication, in particular laser cutting, for the production of her cut paper works. Hannah also produced a public installation with laser-engraved tiles that depicts the flora surrounding Messejana...