JA.CA is an artist-in-residency program located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, which offers technical and social support for the realization of projects relating to new media art. By providing six national and six international artists with a living infrastructure, access to technical materials, ample studio space and a group of multicultural fellows, JA.CA hopes to cultivate a space of cultural and artistic ebullience and intellectual excitement. Selected artists will be chosen to develop original projects that demonstrate social engagement and aesthetic reflection.
Central to the project's mission is the advancement of intercultural and intellectual exchange – and the integration of JA.CA's international and artistic community with the local context. JA.CA will foster a social community of year-long local artists-in-residence and bi-monthly international artists-in-residence; it will thus act as a nexus between local and international forces and establish international trends with Belo Horizonte while promoting local trends abroad.
The cohabitation of JA.CA with its host community – Jardim Canadá – provides mutual and rich opportunities for education and exchange; in this spirit, the project also contains a social and educational initiative through the introduction of media literacy courses and access to artistic practices within the community. Additionally, JA.CA proposes a permanent new media art collection open to the community and educational resources encompassing workshops, library and media access for the public.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Xandro Gontijo - Executive Director
Xandro Gontijo is a cultural administrator and project manager. He has a Business Management and Communication Technologies degree from NYU. He managed the Empresa Gontijo de Transportes Ltda Logisitcs department for 5 years. He now concentrates on developing and managing cultural and social projects in Brazil.
Pedro Mendes - Director of Exhibitions
Pedro Mendes is a curator and director of MendesBahia Arte Contemporanea, a gallery in Belo Horizonte that has promoted brazilian artists nationally and internationally. He has a degree in Philosophy from the American University in Paris, and a MA from Christie's Education. Pedro has collaborated with European galleries such as: Anita Beckers in Germany and Gandy Gallery in Bratislava.
Francisca Caporali - Program Director
Francisca Caporali is a Brazilian artist based in between Brooklyn and Belo Horizonte. She has a MA from MECAD – ESDI in Barcelona- Spain, and she is a MFA candidate at Hunter College - Integrated Media Arts. She has received the AAUW International Fellowship 2007/08 and a 2008 LMCC Swing Space residency. Francisca’s work has been shown in many festivals and exhibitions as: SCOPE and Orchard47 in NYC, UnionDoc in Brooklyn, MANA in Jersey City, Gandy Gallery in Slovakia, Break 2.4 Festival in Slovenia, VideoBrasil, Wide World Film festival in Toronto and the Flaherty Seminar in Hamilton.
Matthew Wood - International Residency Coordinator
Matthew Wood has a Philosophy degree from the American University in Paris. He has been working with Medes Bahia Arte Contemporanea coordinating international collaborations, publications and co-curating exhibitions.
APPLICATION
JA.CA will be releasing its first open call by the end of April, 2008.
Programming starting on Summer 2008. Interested artists should propose:
- An art project that involves the community. E.g.: Participatory Works, Site-Specific, Alternative Architecture and etc.
Or;
- An art project and a workshop that engages certain groups of the community.
A more complete description and details about local groups will be available in our website soon. Any suggestion and questions please contact
us.
- soon
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Anita Beckers
Anita Beckers opened her own gallery in Darmstadt in 1984, after 30 years of collecting art. Later, in 1998, Mrs. Beckers moved to Frankfurt, where she established a strong reputation - being now considered an international reference not only in Video Art but in Contemporary Art. In 2006 she opened a secondary exhibition space („Satellit“) for interdisciplinary projects. She is an organizer and jury for the LOOP Video Art Fair since 2003, has collaborated with Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and ASA European Mathildenhöhe. She has also been part of the managing committee at the Institute for New Media in Frankfurt for 4 years.
Margery Arent Safir
Director of the Arts Arena and Professor of Comparative Literature at The American University of Paris; member of Latin America research group CRICCAL, Sorbonne and of the Advisory Council of the Aspen Institute Global Initiative on Art, Culture and Society.. She is the author and editor of works on Latin American fiction and on science and literature, including Earth Tones:The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (with Manuel Durán), Melancholies of Knowledge: Literature in the Age of Science (with Stephen Jay Gould et.al.), Connecting Creations: Science-Technology Literature-Arts; translator of texts by Julio Cortázar and Michel Rio; and organizer of multi-disciplinary international colloquia, She is a recent Meymandi Distinguished Visitor at the National Humanities Center in the United States (2007).
Chus Martinez
Chus Martinez, critic, curator and writer was born in 1972 in Spain. After studying philosophy and history of art in Barcelona, she did a master degree in curatorial studies at Bard College in New York. From 2002–2005 she worked as curator at the Sala Rekalde in Bilbao, Spain, and have from January 1, 2006 been appointed Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein, where she also coordinates an Artist-in-residency program.
Ximena Diaz
- bio soon
Isaura Pena
- bio soon
Andrés Burbano
- bio soon
