Residency

The Artistic Residency program showcases the yearly residency programs offered by the organization to support Brazilian visual artists. This section aims to provide an overview of each residency, including the artist and their work during the residency, as well as a brief description of the residency itself.

Rafael RG is a visual artist who lives and works between Guarulhos and São Luís do Maranhão, Brazil. He has a degree in Visual Arts from Belas Artes de São Paulo and has received numerous awards and scholarships, including the 1st Foco ArtRio Award and the Iberê Camargo Scholarship for residency at Künstlerhaus Bremen in Germany. RG has had residencies at various institutions, including Gasworks in London, Triangle France in Marseille, and FAAP Artist Residency in São Paulo.

In his artistic practice, RG brings together documentary and affective sources to construct his works. He often uses documents from institutional or personal archives and integrates these with narratives that may involve himself or an alter ego. The result is works that often approach fiction or a notion of fictionality. RG's current areas of interest include affective relationships, sexual and gender politics, racial identity, and related issues. He explores these themes through workshops, installations, performative texts, publications, and objects.

RG's work is supported by the @garciafamilyfoundation. He continues to produce thought-provoking works that challenge viewers to consider the complex intersections of politics, identity, and affect in our lives.

2022

Rafael RG

Nádia Taquary raises questions related to the knowledge and practices of traditions in Creole jewelry. In her works, she uses wood, gold, silver, beads, straw, and other objects representative of the history of the Black population in Brazil. These objects, which have lost their meaning over time, originally represented freedom for many enslaved Black women, and today are being revisited and empowered by the artist to emphasize the continuation of contemporary racial struggles.

2021

Nadia Taquary

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE FOUNTAINHEAD RESIDENCY IN MIAMI

We are thrilled to have Mano Penalva for the residency program 2020 in partnership between The55Project and The Fountainhead residency in Miami. We want to thank Kathryn Mikesell, co-Founder of The Fountainhead, Adriana Malfitano, and Ricardo Mor for helping us with the artist selection and nomination. Congratulations to Mano Penalva.Mano Penalva is a Brazilian artist who documents the material culture, behavioral changes, and globalization surrounding our contemporary lives. His art reflects on the character of objects and how they transition through the world.

During the program, Mano Penalva created “American Sky,” 2020, a 5 min video performance.

"The flag of Penalva waves high - an imagined flag suggests an inclusive America with all nations under the same sky. The stars and the navy blue color are borrowed from the flag of the United States, its version signals to infinite stars that shine even in dark times. The work reminds the viewer of the many types of Americans that exist above and below Ecuador and serves as an invitation to understand America in its entirety better. "

Text by Ana Clara Silva.

2020

Mano Penalva

“ESCRIBE UNA CARTA DE AMOR”

Curated by Adriana Herrera | Miami, October 15, 2018

The project used poetic sentences to activate subjective spaces in Downtown Miami creating the possibility of public interaction, promoting new possibilities for political and social discussion while activating conversation beyond the artist's native Brazilian territory, expanding while allowing borders to dissipate.

"I am very interested in this ambiguity of phrases, which permeate politics and affection. In addition to this, there is the idea of presenting a work far from the space of the white cube, that allows to reach people completely alien to the art, but never alien to the politics or to the love.” - Ivan Grilo.