Concept Casa Wan

Cultural Production Within the Countryside Combined with Hospitality

One invited international or local artist whose work deals with the theme of travel, hospitality, mobility, transit or movement can stay cost-free for up to one month with access to a private studio. The artist is welcome to think and create, to research and play and leave behind a trace of their stay.

Guests who stay at Casa WAN directly support and gain insight into an artist’s practice and enable the time and space for creative endeavors on site.

I see an artist's stay at Casa Wan as an opportunity to expand creative work and foster artistic experimentation. It is also a time to pursue the practice free from any concrete goal and explore it in a different and natural environment. It is interesting to examine what cultural production within the countryside could mean and am eager to learn through the artist's perspective more about the region. The residency is place-based rather than work-based. It is intended to engage with the environment and connect with its inhabitants.

I host you personally and show you around. Im am available for local advice, social environment, and professional guidance on-site. Artists will be introduced to relevant contacts in the region and accompanied to interesting excursions.

The idea is to connect artists with local people of interest and to enable an exchange. At the end of an artist's stay, I invite them to leave something of their time behind and share it with the public. May it be a presentation, performance, exhibition, workshop, reading, open studio, meal, walk, etc. Furthermore, I kindly ask them to leave behind a piece of art or an object that has meant something to them during the artist residency.

1. Artist in residence October 2021 Caique Tizzi

Aljezur, 22°
Casa WAN is pleased to invite you to the first artist-in-residence event to take place this Sunday, the 17th of October 2021 at 4pm.
Aljezur, 22° is an olive oil tasting experience in four steps. Caique Tizzi, artist and cook in residence, collaborates with Aljezur-based chef, Maria Gonzalez in an attempt to explore the ingredient in multiple temperatures.
Casa WAN
This is an invitation only event and is supported by CUXO Oils.

2. Artist in residence April/May 2022 Stefanie Moshammer

On the occasion of the current artist in residence @stefanie_moshammer Stefanie Moshammer, we invite you to an evening at Casa Wan where she will introduce her work.
You will be welcomed on Saturday May 7 at 7pm with wine and snacks. Let us know if you want to come.

3. Artist in residence November/December 2022 Antony Valerian

Exhibition invitation to Casa Wan on Saturday, December 3rd, between 14:00 and 16:00.

Painter and artist-in-residence Antony Valerian shares an insight to his work produced during his stay in Aljezur. He was fascinated by the vastness of the landscape and the natural and cultural interspaces that arise through it.

His paintings are usually large-scale oil on canvas and depict people and other figurative phenomena. Here the challenge was to work with available materials from the village and to allow a little time to unwind between the next big exhibition is taking place in January, in the prestigious auction house Grisebach Berlin, together with the well-known photographer August Sander.

Chef Maria Gonzalez will await you with a selected wine and tapas pop-up available for you to purchase.

This could also be an opportunity to talk to artist Evy Jokhova, who is spending a mini artist retreat at Casa Wan to rest from her successful solo exhibition showing at the moment at 3+1 gallery in Lisbon.

4. Artist in residence April/May 2023 Lena Marie Emrich

Invitation to an art afternoon at Casa Wan on Saturday, May 13th, between 14:00 and 17:00.

Sculptor and artist-in-residence Lena Marie Emrich @lenamemrich shares an insight into her practice and serves her regional inspired signature drink.

Material use is an important part of her practice. Her projects focus on collaborative ways of working between craft and theory-based development. Here she coproduced with Aljezur resident Ysaline Ophoff @atelier.balance and transformed the technique of basket weaving into a new sculptural form, complementing her series Terrible Tourists.

In addition, visual anthropologist Vera Abreu @veracastroabreu will show her documentary about the local, traditional basket weaver Sr. Antonio.

**5. Artist in residence October 2023 Paul Hance

The itinerant practice of artist Paul Hance can be understood as an alchemical travelogue inspired by intimate encounters with craftsmanship and nature across time and place. Hance weaves these practices and elements into a multidimemsional aesthetic map that reimagines the relations between local and global. His transformation of materials— wood, glass, incense, iron, photography— discloses a wealth of latent narratives in them, an interzone between Umberto Ecco and Isamu Noguchi. Hance’s work is experimental in the same way as ZM Dagar or pre Anatolian rug makers: défined less by aesthetic and more by a self examining and pushing ever forward of materials, dissolving the distinction between the artisan and the experimental. Encountering Hance’s work is to be reminded that the reframing and revalorisation of lost or overlooked materials constitutes an avant garde that energetically unites deep past and uncovered future horizons.

Text by Brian Rodgers

Collaborations & supporters:

Handmade natural bed frames, mattresses & pillows by COCO-MAT
Handmade ceramics from Portugal by Motel a Miio
Handmade bedding by elegante
Handmade poufs & lamps from Portugal by Fabricaal
Handmade bedspreads from Portugal by ChiCoração