Artists in residence

Stéphanie Melyon-Reinette – also known as Nèfta Poetry (as poet and artist) is a performance artist, dancer-choreographer, cultural activist, independent academic and, above all, researcher.

As such, her work – both artistic and social science – explores the sociologies of the French Caribbean and the Americas. She has published several collections of poetry (Les Bleus de l’Existence, L’Harmattan, 2009; Ombres, Éditions Persée, 2011 and Mousmée, self-published, 2015) and is preparing her next opus.

She has contributed to the Haitian journal of Creole culture DOKRE.I.S for 3 editions and has been a member of the jury for the BALISAILLES international poetry competition (in French and Creole) since 2022. As a performer, she has developed a series of experiments or performative experiences, some of which have been presented in her exhibitions, such as Toloman at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (June 2023) in Gimpo, South Korea.

As an activist, she has been the curator of the Cri de Femmes festival for 12 years, and as a sociologist, she has been the author of several essays and collective books since 2009. Her work focuses on black bodies in performance, Afro-diasporic/black music and dance, gender and sexuality studies, masculinity, migration and identity, Caribbean/Haitianity and more. She was awarded the Bridget Jones Travel Award 2023 by the Society for Caribbean Studies (London) at De Monfort University, Leicester (July 2023).

Elsa Mencagli is a Danish multimedia artist currently based in Italy. She holds a Bachelor’s from the Aarhus School of Architecture (Denmark, 2016) and a Master of Fine Art in Performing Arts from the Iceland University of the Arts (Iceland, 2019).

As a multimedia artist, she creates and thinks across media, from sculptural installation to video and performance. Through practices of attentive listening and attunement to both the body and the environment, her creative work takes form in the attempt to reveal and make felt what often remains unnoticed. She is interested in crafting conditions to experience diverse modes of encounter that may create shifts in perception and propose different modes of inter-relation.

Elsa Mencagli has presented her work nationally and internationally between Italy, USA, Germany, Iceland, and Portugal. Her most recent collaborations are with Paula Diogo in Terra Nullius, presented at the National Theater D. Maria II in Lisbon, and with Alex Cassal in A Biblioteca do Fim do Mundo, presented at the 2021 Verão festival Azul in Loulé and in 2022 at the Viriato Theater in Viseu.

She is also a co-founder of Celestial Bodies, a project dedicated to opening spaces in order to explore meanings and practices of solidarity, care, empathy, and wonder. Together with Nora Tormann, she is curating the CB encounter 2022, taking place in Tuscania, Italy, in partnership with the cultural association Vera Stasi.

Jonathan Mencarelli is a professional sculptor who works and practices internationally, but it is in French Polynesia that he has decided to make his mark.

With Polynesia as his source of inspiration, he tries to go beyond the artisanal dimension of Polynesian art and to bring a contemporary touch to defy the expected. Jonathan Mencarelli sculpts directly on stone, which allows him to approach his work in a raw and direct manner, without abandoning the purity of the material that he meticulously chooses for the project at hand.

Constantly in a perspective of evolution, the artist seeks to renew himself and go further in his practice. In 2002, he received the first prize for sculpture at the Polynesian Artists Festival in To’ata. Since then, he has continued to hold exhibitions and symposiums, with the upcoming project of the Lapidiales, a major international exhibition dedicated to megalithic sculptures.