In a continuous mission to support artists and creatives, the Ștefan Câltia Foundation is preparing to end the spring edition of its biannual artistic residency program, Șona AIR (Artists in Residence), which hosted Sorina Vasilescu (Vaselina), illustrator, graphic designer and comic author, and the duo Maria Mandea and George Marian Preduț, part of the collective of artists and architects Super:Serios.
Sorina Vasilescu (Vaseline). PHOTO Ana Negoita
On this occasion, Șona AIR announces the partnership with the Globalworth Foundation, as well as the participants who will take part in the autumn edition: Alina Manolache, filmmaker, author of some films on the border between documentary and experimental cinema, and Nicoleta Moise, writer and journalist.
Within the project co-financed by AFCN, which approaches the model of individual residencies, artists benefit from space, time and financial resources to complete their projects. For two months, they are hosted in the Blue House in the village of Șona (Brașov county), a house restored in 2011 by the Ștefan Câltia Foundation, and they have the freedom to explore and work without the pressure of immediate production.
The 2024 pilot edition, curated by Monica Dănilă, the coordinator of the Șona AIR residency program, hosts only Romanian artists, and from 2025 it will also address international artists, for whom a call for participation will be launched as early as the fall of this year.
The Globalworth Foundation has recently joined as a project partner that aims to create a favorable environment for research and creation, facilitating interdisciplinary exchange and interaction with local resources. “We believe that residencies, workshops or other types of training programs are necessary for artistic reflection and for the individual as well as unitary progress of art. We are happy to contribute to the development of such programs for artists, which give them the opportunity to create in a different context, without constraints”said Georgiana Oltenescu, Globalworth Marketing and Communication Director.
During the first stage of the 2024 pilot edition, held between February 26 and April 26, the illustrator Sorina Vasilescu (Vaselina) worked on assembling 40 pages of the comic volume dedicated to the subject of death in various cultures and periods, while the designers Maria Mandea and George Marian Preduț have developed a collaborative artistic research project entitled Persona and place – searches among characters and spaces.
“In addition to walking on the mounds, through the apple orchard and cooking together, the time I spent at Șona helped me take a break from the accelerated pace in which I lived. I worked on my personal project, but most of the time I spent talking with colleagues from Super:Serios, with the coordinator Monica Dănilă and evaluating my progress so far, questioning my motivation to go further according to the model previous. If the afterlife looks like such a retreat, I will retire early, or at least I will try to move my activity, gradually, to an area closer to nature.” says the illustrator Sorina Vazelina.
“It gives us great pleasure to discover something new every day at Șona. It's strange how, in a small space, you sometimes end up noticing more than in a big city. Life has a slightly slower pace, at least one speed. We go for a walk with the characters of the Little Chaos project, meet the characters-villagers, learn their stories and the stories of the village. We don't know if this will necessarily lead us anywhere, but we hope to get to know as deeply as possible the place that has been our home for these two months.“, say Maria Mandea and George Marian Preduț, part of the collective of artists and architects Super:Serios, who get involved in the public space through playful strategies.
Maria Mandea and George Marian Preduț PHOTO: Ana Negoita
The Șona AIR (Artists in Residence) residency this fall, which will take place throughout September and October, will host the artists Alina Manolache, filmmaker, author of some films on the border between documentary and experimental cinema, and Nicoleta Moise, writer and journalist, whose work practice combines archives, video and text to make less known stories or events visible.
Șona AIR (Artists in Residence) is a pilot residency program initiated by the Ștefan Câlția Foundation that supports interdisciplinarity and collaboration and which aimed to organically integrate new cultural models in the rural area, encouraging interaction between residents and the local context, facilitating communication with the villagers, but also with the surroundings.
The Ștefan Câltia Foundation was established in 2016 and aims to promote substantive projects from visual culture, support organizational development and develop the sustainability of projects in which it is involved. The Foundation's activity also materialized around an increased interest in the care and valorization of the heritage of the work of Ștefan Câltia, social and conservation actions related to the village of Șona mainly, but also to the south of Transylvania in the secondary.
