Art Residencies

Coline Gaulot is a French artist whose cross-disciplinary practice mixes painting, writing and installation. She creates colorful and narrative series around common themes and patterns such as the bouquet, the fireworks, the swimming pool, the birthday. Her work is based on the notion of KAIROS, according to which time is marked not chronologically but thanks to decisive moments that create a sea change. Events that happen in life, intimate or not, visual impressions, key moments. She brings us into her universe which is both personal and universal.

Residency project: Pati-o-Shimasu - Coline explored the theme of “partying”, and in particular the absence of partying in Berlin, because of Covid. She focused on the feeling of lack of contact and on empty spaces by proposing a “party without people”. Sensory reminiscences expressed through a porcelain feast displayed like archaeological pieces, vibrant paintings of disco lights, a poem and light installation in the empty streets of Kreuzberg-Neukölln during the winter lockdown, and a video of the silent and deserted club Wilde Renate. Her work will be exhibited at Officina Kreuzberg at the end of May 2021.

Emma Bäcklund is a Swedish artist whose practice includes photography,  performance and installation. Emma draws from her background in dance and interest in neuroscience to make work that is deeply influenced by both cognitive and physical experiences. habitual and gestural relations.

Residency project: Emma’s practice is increasingly exploring the concept of collaboration and the workshop as an artform. During her residency she worked together with a group of children age 5-12 exploring embodiment of self identity within collectivity. With focus on finding new means of the concept togetherness, simple somatic exercises aim to function as catalysts to freely explore collective and individual expression. The cues vary throughout the duration of the workshop and investigate intimacy, mimicry, belongingness and the performativity of togetherness through improvisation dance, release techniques, drawing and photography. All participants are important and their influences and ideas affect the development of the workshop.

Camila is a Colombian artist working in Berlin since 2019. Her practice focuses on experimental painting, and the use of different types of light for sculptural installations. The encounter of materials in her work reflect upon the multiple realities of modern digital society.

Residency project: Modern matter - A clash of opposing essences

Modern digitalized society exists within two contrasting realities. Cold, tangible, earthly materials shape our cities and dictate our interactions through space while an alluring, evasive digital reality encloses the sensory experience attached to our social interactions. During her residence at Officina, Camila worked with Dagsbirta (neural artist) and Marked by Necessity (producer) to create a sculptural audiovisual installation that explored the relationship between the spatial understanding of both realities. An experimental clash of substances and mediums in her work reflect on how an unlikely coexistence has formed between the opposing essences of material world and digital technology.

Neda Ahmadi is an Iranian animation director/artist living and working in Berlin. Born in 1984 in Tehran, she studied costume and stage design for theatre at Art University of Tehran and later finished a master degree in Character animation at University of Arts London (2016). Since then she lives and works in Berlin. Her work influenced by easter European animation, evolved around themes such as mythology and music and moved towards subjects connected to social justice. She has been awarded by a grant from the Senate of Berlin for her latest short animated film in production.

Residency Project: Amygdala is a hand-made short animation, based on personal and true events. The quest is to narrate a story of fear and attachment, loss and identity through the physical act of painting and drawing many frames. It has been awarded the grant for women artist in film/video from by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Using officina's dark room Neda started bringing the Amygdala backgrounds of her film to life.

Alia Zapparova is an artist and writer. She makes books, installations and occasional performative workshops from images, text, paper and thread in various configurations. Her work is a search for strategies and poetics of transformation through the everyday.

Residency project: “How Not To” - This project misuses photographic paper and processes to explore some senses of a “not”:not doing, not printing, not making, and end up with a collection of traces that speak of failures and absences. It is a way to approach not only of the literal but also the metaphorical and poetic sensitivity of the photographic paper, its openness to light, its response to exposure as darkness, the play of transparency and opaqueness on its surface, and the ambiguous, unreadable images that result. For traditional photographic purposes, the paper is rendered unusable, and yet something emerges that would be inaccessible when it is used correctly.
During her residency at Officina Alia used the chemigram process, where images are formed as result of a reaction between photographic paper, chemicals and light.

Born in 1986, Julia Castel studied graphic design at IPESAA in Montpellier, France. She obtained her diploma in 2007 and then moved to Paris where she worked as a Art Director.
She quickly abandoned this advertising aesthetic in favour of silver photography, to which she was initiated by her parents. She trained at the Saint-Cyprien photography school in Toulouse.
In 2019, she moved to Berlin where she developed her skills in fine Art photography and cyanotype. The same year she wins the first prize of "before & after" contest organised by Fisheye magazin

Residency project: La Grande Motte is a French city in front of the Mediterranean Sea characterized by a unique architectural context. Many of the prominent buildings are built in narrow contact with the sea coast and are designed in pyramidal forms - a failed architectural dream of modernist times.
With 2 million tourists per year it is one of the favorite resorts in France. The buildings are not visible in the pictures, but their presence can be easily detected. This series is about unsucess, a city dream that 30 years has been futuristic, which now seems to be frozen in the past.
During the residency at Officina Kreuzberg, Julia Castel used the cyanotype process to develop her pictures of the everyday routine in La Grande Motte. This technique allows the experimentation of mixing analog & digital development and offer a strong visual support to the ‘blue’ atmosphere of La Grande Motte.