Echoes of the Void art project launched a call for researchers, artists and writers to contribute a text or writing to enrich the project and enlighten us about deserts and their context. Furthermore, the art project invited a few researchers to write an article about the given topics.

Here you will find the finalists of the call and an abstract of their contributions. It will be published a printed book with the selected contributions and guest’s articles corresponding to the final exhibition of the resulting art works of this itinerant project.

Nessrine Abbasi (Tunisia) – Agriculture for Sustainable and Inclusive Development in Tunisia 

holds a master’s degree in research, called regional development economics. Nessrine Abbassi is currently enrolled in the first year of doctoral degree in economics at the faculty of economics and management of Sfax, Tunisia. The thesis project revolves around the regional disparities and climatic disparities that hamper the process of sustainable and inclusive development in arid and rural areas and then their repercussions on the inclusive growth within a country.

Camilla Boemio (Italy) – Only a Magical Condition 

Boemio’s curatorial practice broadened between art and science, combining a number of approaches from developing structures for supporting either the work of others, forms of political imaginary, existing and fictional realities to broader enquiries into forms of commonality and discursive sites, resulting in projects merging exhibitions, politics, fiction, display, public space, writing, and whatever else feels urgent at the time. Boemio co-founded, and directed the thematic AAC Platform in Rome, she is member of AICA International Association of Arts Critics. In 2016, she was curator of Diminished Capacity, the first Nigerian Pavilion at 15^th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale of Venice; and she took part at The Social, 4th International Association for Visual Culture Biennial Conference held at Boston University. In 2013, she was deputy curator of Maldives Pavilion at 55^thInternational Art Exhibition La Biennale of Venice, and in 2014 she curated Apprehension Global Society and Contemporary Art on the Twitter Generation Symposium, Parallel Event to the Art University at 6^th Bucharest Biennial. Boemio has written and edited books; contributed essays and reviews to books, journals, magazines and websites; given public lectures, talks and conference papers.

Lepetitemasculin: Cristina Fiordimela (Italy) & Freddy Paul Grunert (Germany) – Echoes of the void. Long durée of body-swarm: stars and species.

Cristina Fiordimela

holds a PhD in Interiors and Exhibition Design, Politecnico di Milano – Fondation Le Corbusier, Master in Science Communication, Università degli Studi di Milano – Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris, enrolled of Ordine architetti di Milano and ICOM (International Council of Museum).  Visiting professor since 2006 Politecnico di Milano – Design School of Interiors and Exhibition Design Museography Art Science: Contributions and essays for international editions and publications of festivals, exhibitions conferences, books, catalogues and reviews.

Freddy Paul Grunert

is an artist and associate curator at ZKM, Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, where he curated among other things The Lack of the Other, first important experience on the study of light in spirituality. The study on proprieties of light crosses its recent research in media art science and presented in nternational venues. He was engaged in political activity in Strasbourg and Brussels at The Council of Europe and the European Parliament, and at the Climate Change Conference. Grunert studied philosophy and anthropology in Stuttgart and Rome. ETCAEH Nova Gorica and TU Technischen Universität Berlin are two of his most recent lecturing posts. Starting from the mid-1980s, he has contributed as an artist and curator to film, art e new media festivals, including the Venice Biennials where with the work Xenografia (a term coined by him) he launched a series of researches into new media art and communication physics, which were hosted also at the festivals of Locarno, São Paulo and Berlin.

André Leal (Brazil) –  ¿Qué es el desierto? – Dos catástrofes y un Refugio (y una refutación)

is graduated in Architecture and Urbanism by the University of São Paulo and has a Master degree in Visual Arts by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro with the research Space-body, environment-experience: Hélio Oiticica and Gordon Matta-Clark – genealogies of the ‘contemporary’. He is professor of Visual Arts at Candido Mendes University and independent critic and curator, having published texts in several academic and independent magazines. His doctoral investigation will address the relations between art and urban landscape through the production of several Brazilian and international artists.

Sage Lewis (USA) – Space Analogues

is currently based in Tunbridge, Vermont. She holds an MFA in Painting & Drawing from The Ohio State University and recently completed a 10-month Artist-in-Residence Fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar.

Prior to her studies at OSU, Lewis lived in Portland, Maine for 12 years where she earned her BFA in Painting with an Art History minor from Maine College of Art. She held positions in arts administration and curating at the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA, the Maine Arts Commission, and most recently, the Portland Museum of Art. Lewis is interested in the connections between material process and concept and works through drawing, sculpture, prints, and photography to translate images into multiple outcomes. Her photo-based works evoke an uncertain sense of space and establish a tactile relationship between drawing and the photographic. Lewis has recently exhibited at the Denison Museum in Granville, Ohio, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Hamad bin Khalifa University Art Gallery in Doha, Qatar.

Judy Ling Wong (UK) – The First Desert Silence

painter, poet and environmentalist is best known as the Honorary President of Black Environment Network  (BEN). For 27 years she was the UK Director of BEN, with an international reputation as the pioneer and creator of the field of multi-cultural participation in the built and natural environment. Under her leadership, BEN worked across diverse sectors to engage citizens in the context of sustainable development, integrating social, cultural and environmental concerns. Judy is a major voice on policy towards equity and social inclusion. Her work merges cultural spirituality, art and environmental activism. Present key involvements include: Trustee of the National Park City Foundation, campaigning to make London the world’s first National Park City; Cultural Strategy Development Group for Aluna – campaign for the world’s first tidal moon clock; Steering Group – Tree Charter; IUCN/WPCA Urban Conservation Strategies Specialist Group; Vice-Chair DEFRA Civil Society Partnership Network Core Group.

Mauro Rosas, Fernando Sánchez, Fabian Urban (Argentina) – Invention and Conquest of the Desert in Patagonia Argentina

We formed us as a working group in 2013, from the realization of the project “Experiencia Transfrontera” (“Transboundary Experience”), which included working with oral narratives, transfer to the Cordillera de los Andes, performance, audiovisual recording and preparation of an exhibition proposal. From this journey, we develop a work that was mounted in two different contexts: “Experiencia Transfrontera”, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2015 and “Experiencia Transfrontera” + site-specific “Disassembly”, MEC, Fernández Oro, Río Negro, Argentina, 2016. We also participate in extracurricular project “Images and alterities”, U. N. Comahue, 2015-2016; and in the artistic residence “Barda del Desierto” (C. Cordero, Río Negro, Argentina) in january of 2017. Our central interest is the creative and experimental research on the intersections between art, technology and humanities disciplines as well as public interventions through different aesthetic languages.

Naz Shahrokh (USA) – J’arrive… we are all connected

has worked as an artist and educator internationally in the United States, Egypt, and the UAE. She received an MFA/MS from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, where she later taught Fine Arts and Art History from 1998 to 2008. She joined the faculty at the American University in Cairo, Egypt in 2004-2006, and has been teaching at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE since 2008. Awards for her work include the Change Inc. (the Rauschenberg Foundation) Grant, Captiva, FL, and the Artist-In-The-Marketplace Fellowship, the Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY.  Throughout her studio practice, Naz investigates common challenges found within the environment and strives to find a connection that is significant in conjunction to society, the individual, and like a narrator or a poet, she assembles visual narratives that are gentle to the eye as well as revealing. She is currently working on several projects connected to land art, as well as a body of work linked to cartography.

Marina Velez (Spain) – Desert, Consciousness, Life, Cognition

is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher based in Cambridge UK. She is also a fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, an educator and researcher. Marina is the founder and organiser of the yearly artist led project Cambridge Sustainability Residency and jury panel member and curator of the Sustainability Art Prize for students. Marina has co-edited publications about art and sustainability and regularly presents papers in her subject areas of Contemporary Art and Sustainability. Marina’s research title is Value in the aesthetic field: practice as a catalyst for translation, meaning and worth.

Emanuela Guano & Ariel Walker – “Argentina is an Imaginary Country:” Negotiating Identities across the Urban/Rural Divide

Emanuela Guano is Professor of Anthropology at Georgia State University. Her work on urban imaginaries and the social production of space is featured in international journals like Cultural Anthropology; City and Society; Gender, Place and Culture, and Ethnos; she is also the author of Immaginando Buenos Aires. Ceti medi e modernità urbana (FrancoAngeli 2016) and Creative Urbanity: An Italian Middle Class in the Shade of Revitalization (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

Ariel Walker holds a MA in Anthropology from Georgia State University. Her research interests range from visual culture to urban anthropology, and her graduate research focused on the activism of Atlanta’s artists and their role in gentrification.