Close to There <> Perto de Lá, August 2019: Full Programming Announced

We are pleased to announce that the full programming for Close to There has been announced!

Close to There < > Perto de Lá is an international artist exchange project between Comfort Station (Chicago, USA) and Projeto Ativa (Salvador, Brazil), in collaboration with Harmonipan (Mexico City, Salvador), made possible by the MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund. By bringing members of these two artistic communities in proximity with one another, this project aims to gestate long-term artistic collaborations between the participants, share arts-organizing models from their respective socio-political-artistic contexts, and encourage creative discourse around ideas such as the African Diaspora and contemporary Latinx/Latin American identities.

The exchange will begin with a multi-disciplinary group of Salvador-based artists visiting Chicago August 9th - 29th 2019, carrying out a variety of programs, performances, and research through Comfort Station and its partner spaces across the city. In February of 2020, a group of Chicago-based artists will in turn visit Salvador to engage with the city’s creative landscape via Projeto Ativa’s network of artists and cultural institutions.

Our institutional partner venues in Chicago include:

The Poetry Foundation
Links Hall
Rebuild Foundation (Stony Island Arts Bank, Dorchester Art + Housing Project)
Spudnik Press
Co Prosperity Sphere
6018 North
Arts Incubator (University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life initiative)

This project is made possible by the generosity of the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund.

Organized and curated by Jordan Martins, Lanussi Pasquali, and Juci Reis.
Graphic Design by Paco Barba

Photograph by Juh Almeida

Featured

Lanussi Pasquali was born in Riozinho, Rio Grande do Sul, 1972. As a visual artist, she works in sculpture, installation, and fibers. She enjoys sewing and tailoring, embroidery and other slow and forgotten affairs. Pasquali holds a Master's in Visual Arts from UFBA and enjoys teaching, advising poetic research, encounters and conversations about art. She is the founder of Projeto Ativa and its offshoots, Riso Ativa and Ativa Atelier Livre. She lives and works in Salvador since 2002.

Edbrass Brasil is a sound artist, educator and researcher. Edbrass is also a producer and active organizer in the experimental music scene in Salvador, where he has developed an intense exchange with musicians and artists from across Brazil and the world. In his artistic practice, he investigates the manipulation and collage of recordings and samples, coupled with the use of unconventional wind instruments, traversing different creative processes, with an emphasis on free improvisation and microtonal music.

Patricia Almeida is trained as an architect and urbanist and works professionally in two main fields. As a photographer, she develops authorial projects and covers theatrical events and performances. As a designer, she is a co-founder and collaborator in the collective TANTO – Criações Compartilhadas, whose work traverses the fields of graphic design, publishing, visual arts, architecture and urban planning.

Candai Calmon is a Black woman, urban quilombola, community feminist. She is a professional dancer, ballerina, and educator. She has worked in the field of dance for 18 years, where I have obtained an artistic education Brazil and abroad, concentrating on Contemporary Dance in its most Afro-referential, South-decolonial and feminist practices. In this field, she has worked with several mentors who are pioneers in the study of the “discursive body” and “corporal states” in Dance.
Calmon holds a bachelor’s in Gender and Diversity Studies from the Universidade Federal da Bahia and a Master’s in Dance from the same institution. She currently participates in collectives of popular and ancestral culture, such as Capoeira Angola and Maracatu do Baque Virado, in Salvador, and is involved in political movements for solidary economy in Salvador.
Her current research revolves around the female body, negritude, and memory, seeking pathways for empowerment, self-care and expression. She has developed various immersive artistic experiences with the Black women and traditional quilombola people, using the creative elements of contemporary dance and improvisation.

Edgard Oliva (born 1957) originally obtained a bachelor’s in Biological Sciences from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in 1982. In 1984, he began his studies in Visual Arts, with a concentration in Painting at the School of Fine Arts at UFBA. Between 1990 and 1994, he lived between Brazil and Germany, presenting his work in several solo and group exhibitions. In 1994, he began to teach painting at the Visual Arts Workshop at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia; while his own advancement in photography techniques led him to pursue deeper studies in the area. In 2004, he became a professor of Photography at the School of Fine Arts at UFBA. In 2004, he also began his Master’s in Fine Arts at the School in Fine Arts of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (completed 2016), with a focus on night-time photography. In 2015, he pursued a doctoral internship at the Department of Art and Communications at the Universidade de Aveiro, in Portugal. His work is regularly featured in individual and group exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, including Germany, France and Portugal. He also has experience in video art, documentary film, and curation.

Adriana Araújo is a visual artist whose work investigates nature through installation and other art forms. Her work has been exhibited in Salvador, São Paulo, Germany, Australia, Portugal and Angola. She has attended residencies in Australia (2009) and Portugal (2010) with projects supported respectively by the Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Office of the State of Bahia.

A black woman and artist from Bahia, Inaê Moreira holds a degree in Dance from the Dance School at Funceb, a bachelor's with a teaching certificate in Dance from the Universidade Federal da Bahia, and a professional certificate in Circus Arts from the Escuela de Artes Urbanas in Rosário, Argentina. She worked for two years as an instructor in the Centro de Movimento Débora Colker. In 2018, Moreira founded the project Dança Intuitiva para Mulheres ("Intuitive Dance for Women"). She has experience in a diversity of techniques of the body: dance, acrobatics, capoeira angola, contact improvisation, physical theater, and performance. Her current projects incorporate issues lived by the female, Afro-Brazilian and diasporic body.

Daniel Sabóia is a co-founder and collaborator in the collective Tanto Criações Compartilhadas, which develops projects in architecture, design and visual arts. He has a Bachelor’s in Architecture and Urban Planning, and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Urban Planning at the Universidade Federal da Bahia. As a member of the Laboratório Urbano (“Urban Lab”) research group, he investigates methodological possibilities for the apprehension and collective construction of critical thinking about the contemporary city, through the crossing of urbanistic and artistic practices.

João Oliveira is a visual artist with a BA in Visual Arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (2011), and a Master's in Creative Process in Visual Arts from the same university (2017). He is trained in lithography and metal engraving through the Workshops at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (MAM-BA). He works on the encounter of metal engraving with other supports, appropriating personal experience in order to create works with a forged autobiographical nature, obtained through small rituals of self-fiction. A selection of his exhibitions includes "Tomar coca-cola com você” at Galeria ACBEU, Bahia; “Prêmio Gravura EAV”, the Engraving Prize at the School of Visual Arts Parque Lage, Rio de Janerio, where his works have been included in the school's collection; “Circuto das artes” at Galeria do Conselho, Bahia; “Cabra cega” ant the Allliance Française, Bahia; “Como refazer o mundo” at Luiz Fernando Landeiro Arte Contemporânea, Bahia; “Esquizópolis” at the Musem of Modern Art, Bahia; "Arte londrina 4"in Londrina, Paraná; the 11th Recôncavo Arts Biennial, in Bahia; two editions of the Salão de Abril (April Arts Salon) in Ceará; and five editions of the Salões de Artes Visuais (Visual Arts Salon) of Bahia, where he has earned Honorable Mentions and a Prize. Other achievements include the shows "Panapaná - Visual Arts November" at Galeria de Arte Archidy Picado, in João Pessoa, Paraíba; "Paisagem intermitente" at the Coaty House occupation in Salvador, Bahia; "Entre II" at Galeria Entre, in Salvador, Bahia; the solo show "Último ato de orgulho"at Galeria RV Cultura e Arte, in Bahia; and the residencies "Cambio 14" at the Museo Universitario del Chopo, in Mexico; and the prize for engraving "Prêmio Gravura EAV Parque Lage + Mul.ti.plo Espaço Arte", in Rio de Janeiro, which awarded him a residency at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica di Venezia, in Venice, Italy.

Alex Simões

Alex Simões is a poet and performer. He has published "trans formas são" (Organismo Editora, 2018), "Contrassonetos" (Mondrongo, 2015), "(hai)céufies" (Esquizo, 2014) and "Quarenta e Uns Sonetos Catados" (Domínio Público, 2013). Every now and then he presents the performance pieces"você tem seda?", "a cappella de Wally" and "poesia chã", among others. His poems have been published in anthologies, collections, and national and international magazines, with some poems translated into English and Spanish. Since the 90s, Simões regularly participates in important literary events and in various readings and mulilingual events in Bahia and elsewhere. He is currently working ona visual poetry project, #experimentoscomletrasurbana ("experiments with urban letters" or "urban literature"). He has a blog: toobitornottobit.blogspot.com.br

Vanessa Coelho, young Black woman, Black feminist, studies Social Sciences at the Universidade Federal da Bahia. She is a community educator and marginal poet, a member of Coletivo Zeferinas, and poetry slammer, having won the first edition of the Slam das Minas of Bahia in 2019. Coelho also studies theatre at the Teatro Escola program of the Teatro Jorge Amado. She is an organizer with the Articulação Nacional de Negras Jovens Feministas of Bahia (National Alliance of Young Black Feminist Women), and a Youth Ambassador for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC). Coelho is a member of the Ruptura Black collective, where, through the SaferLab (SaferNet Brasil) program, she runs a counternarratives project to combat disinformation and hate speech on the Internet.

Amina was a 2018-2019 Artist-in-Residence at Arts & Public Life and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago. Ross is currently an MFA candidate at Yale School of Art within the sculpture department.

Angel Bat Dawid is a Black American Composer, Improviser, Clarinetist, Pianist, Vocalist and vinyl addict. She is a sonic archaeologist gathering and excavating soundz/music from space, the heavens, the ether and beyond. In 2018, Angel composed a “cosmic love opera” based on Song of Solomon that was performed by prominent free-jazz musicians at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. This year 2019, Angel makes her recording debut on Chicago record label International Anthem. Her Album “The Oracle” was created entirely alone – performing, overdubbing & mixing all instruments & voices by her self – recorded using only her cell phone in various locations, from London UK to Cape Town RSA. Angel also curates a series of nine multidisciplinary concerts at Elastic Arts in Chicago called "Mothership9" where she is building a sonic mythological spaceship to the cosmos. Music is a language, you see, a universal language.-Sun Ra

Comfort StationJuly 2, 2019