Artists in residence

Hans Appelqvist is a composer and video artist. He started out releasing music in the early 2000s. His second full-length album won the Swedish Radio P3 Gold for best pop album, comparable to a grammy award. Since then he has continued releasing albums, all to critical acclaim. 

About ten years ago, he branched out into composing music for film and stage productions. He has composed for shorts, documentaries and features that has been presented at Sundance, Cannes Film Festival and Berlinale. Recently he won the award for Best Music Score at the 2019 IDA Awards at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles for his orchestral score for the documentary feature The Raft.

Remembering some of the actions that marked each stage of the construction of this place is a very pleasant journey.

The moments full of emotions, relaxation, affection, exchanges, breaks, care, desires and distances, are like relics of encounters and farewells.

These paths are also dust and footprints, they are empty bottles and stains on clothes, they are wounds on the skin and hair on the ground, or even, they are pretexts to continue experimenting freely, in the hope of finding you again, of being able to build a new space. I still believe it: maybe soon the barriers that still separate us will become more fluid, maybe what was meant to be here now, will be for later, or simply elsewhere. So we keep walking, together.

– Gabriel Moraes Aquino

The journey inside oneself is important for Gabriel Moraes Aquino. His works unfold step by step a reflection on the body, on our way of being, of learning and reading, on the socium and finally on the world in all its diversity of intertwined cultures. His very sharp and sometimes elusive gesture unfolds in series of actions, photos, sculptures and videos, as a way to provoke a debate, a collective discussion.

For Gabriel Moraes Aquino, art is part of his being and his wanderings. In his life as in his artistic practice, punctuated by stays in several countries: Brazil, China, England, France, Portugal, Japan, he seeks to impregnate himself with the environment and social cues by melting entirely into the place where he is. His willingness to almost digest the culture of others, which manifests itself through his speech and attitude, is very similar to Oswald de Andrade’s Anthropophagous Manifesto. De Andrade used the metaphor of anthropophagy in this manifesto to introduce the idea of simultaneous liberation and assimilation. Does the cultural cannibalism of today still allow for the emancipation that unifies us politically, socially and economically? (…)

– Extract from the text written by Anastasia Krizanovska, published on PAUSE, edition Nº1

Ayed Arafah is a Palestinian artist born in 1983. He graduated in 2012 from the International Academy of Art in Ramallah. Raised in Bethlehem, where he is currently based, Arafah works across various visual media, with a particular focus on drawing and installation. He also engages in musical and acoustic experimentation as part of his broader artistic practice.
Active in cultural initiatives and programs, his work investigates themes of architecture, family structures, symbolism, and identity, often exploring the relationship between personal narrative and collective space.