Artist residencies
Tirana - Vila 31 x Art Explora
The programme residencies Tirana - Vila 31 x Art Explora, will host up to thirty artists and researchers for 3-month residencies spread over 3 sessions per year. Each resident will benefit from a studio apartment, production and exhibition spaces, as well as a living and production grant to develop his or her research. Particular attention will be paid to artists and researchers based in the Balkans, while welcoming international artists.
Located in Vila 31, the former home of dictator Enver Hoxha, the Tirana - Vila 31 x Art Explora artists' residence aims to extend the local dynamic of public reappropriation of this historic site. The NeM architectural firm was chosen to renovate Vila 31, with the aim of balancing the need to preserve the site and its history with the need to create neutral spaces in which to rewrite new, plural histories.
Terms and conditions
The first call for applications was open from April 30 to June 5, 2024, for the first three residency sessions with the possibility to apply for three different types of residency programs:
SOLO
programme
Artists COLLECTIVE
programme
or a researcher/scientist/curator.
Programme
CROSS
Seminars
With the support of programme Europe Créative, Art Explora has joined forces with the Ecole nationale supérieure d'arts de Paris-Cergy (ENSAPC), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Skopje (MoCA) and Oral History Initiative (OHI) - Pristina, to encourage dialogue and mobility between artists in the Balkan and European Union cultural scenes, the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje (MoCA) and Oral History Initiative (OHI) - Pristina, to organize a series of transdisciplinary seminars and performance festivals over a three-year period (2023 to 2025) in Paris, Skopje, Pristina and Tirana.
The first edition of this transdisciplinary seminar, entitled "Réveil sur Mars", was held on June 30 and July 1, 2023 at the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris. On May 24 and 25 2024, Pristina hosted the second edition of this transdisciplinary seminar supported by Oral History Initiative (OHI), focusing on the potential of oral and written archives as political tools. The next stage of the festival, the Skopje Performance Festival, will take place from October 4 to 6, 2024 . Vila 31 in Tirana will then host a performance festival in March 2025, followed by a transdisciplinary seminar in October 2025.
The calendar
Applications close: June 5, 2024
The selection committee
Independent curator and essayist
See more
Pierre Bal-Blanc is an art critic and curator. Editor-in-chief of the magazine Bloc Notes (1998-2000), co-founder of the Design Mental agency, he directed the Centre d'art contemporain de Brétigny-sur-Orge (2003-2014).
Pierre Bal-Blanc was associate curator of Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel. Resonating with the societal thought of Charles Fourier, he is developing the "Phalanstère Project", a series of in situ proposals that critically restructure the logics of labor accumulation.
The most important aspect of his curatorial work is "de-gentrification", inspired by the philosophical work of Pierre Klossowski.
Pierre Bal-Blanc's projects regularly address the paradoxes of perversion and transgression, of the living and the object, through the processes of industrialization and production.
Directors of Hamburger Bahnhof: National Gallery for Contemporary Art, Berlin
See moreTill Fellrath and Sam Bardaouil have been curators and co-directors of Hamburger Bahnhof: Berlin's Museum of Contemporary Art since 2008.
Together they founded the multidisciplinary curatorial platform Art Reoriented in Munich and New York.
They were curators of the 2022 Lyon Biennale, and curators of the French Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, as well as affiliated curators at Berlin's Gropius Bau until 2021.
Their exhibitions have been shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Gwangju and Busan art museums in South Korea, Tate Liverpool and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden.
Curator, author and director of Tirana Art Lab - Contemporary Art Center, Albania
See moreAdela Demetja is an Albanian curator born in Tirana.
She is the director of Tirana Art Lab - Center for Contemporary Art, which she founded in 2010.
As a freelance curator, she has organized numerous exhibitions internationally and with institutions such as Tirana's National Art Gallery, Kosovo's National Art Gallery, Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theater and Portland's Institute for Contemporary Research.
She curated the Albanian pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, represented by Lumturi Blloshmi.
She is the founder and director of programme "Curating with Care", an alternative programme conservation training program based in Tirana.
Curator, lecturer, educator. Director of ΕΜΣΤ | National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens.
See moreKaterina Gregos is a curator and writer. Since 2021, she has been director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMΣT), in Athens.
For over 20 years, her curatorial work has explored the relationship between art, society and politics, with a particular focus on issues of democracy, human rights, economics, ecology, crises and changes in global production circuits. As an independent curator, she has organized Riga, Manifesta and Goteborg.
She has also curated three national pavilions at the Venice Biennale: Denmark (2011), Belgium (2015) and Croatia (2019).
This year, she is curator of the Greek pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. She divides her time between Athens and Brussels.
Curator, Contemporary Creation and Prospective Department, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
See moreAlicia Knock has been a curator for contemporary creation at the Centre Pompidou since 2015.
Her work focuses on modern and contemporary art from Africa and Central Europe, with a particular emphasis on acquisitions and exhibitions.
In 2018, she created the "Cercle international Afrique" of the Friends of the Centre Pompidou.
She seeks to propose innovative, creative and forward-looking exhibition formats that question the museum of tomorrow from a decolonial perspective. Her work is also committed to giving greater visibility to women artists.
She has been appointed curator of the Albanian pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
She has worked with numerous art institutions, including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and MoMA PS1 in New York.
Art historian, contemporary art critic, curator and artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London
See moreHans Ulrich Obrist was born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1968. Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London.
Previously, he was curator of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first exhibition "World Soup, The Kitchen Show" in 1991, he has organized over 300 exhibitions.
Obrist has lectured worldwide at academic and art institutions, and contributed to Artforum, AnOther Magazine, Cahiers d'Art, and 032C; he is a regular contributor to Mousse and Kaleidoscope and writes columns for Das Magazin and Weltkunst.
In 2011, he received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence and, in 2015, the International Folkwang Prize for his commitment to the arts.
Hans Ulrich Obrist is a member of the Art Explora selection committee for residencies in Paris.
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