When I decided to open the house I now live in to artists, so they could come and stay for some days, alone, enjoy and dive into creative processes as they willed, I wrote about it here. It’s been two years. The residency program went on for two periods – Spring and Autumn of 2022 -, but by the end of that year I moved in and it stopped. I struggled to find some other way to keep it going, in a different format (since the house is small and I was permanently here), made an attempt, failed and gave up, so this is the last post about that experience, at least for a foreseeable future.
Those two editions that run in 2022 were just a thing of beauty and I’m pretty sure this is one of the things I did right in my life (and the amount of times I wrote and erased the predictable comment that naturally follows this). I’d like to have done it without charging any fee, but it wasn’t possible and the value I compromised with was enough to cover most of my costs. My relationship with material goods has always been very detached, but the exercise of sharing this place, witch has such an emotional energy, brought me things I wasn’t expecting to get in return. I have no critics, no regrets, absolutely nothing negative to say about what went on here, during that year, with the 19 artists who, altogether, made that adventure come to life. They were: Alexandre de Magalhães, Lucca Béber, José Fadolla, Alice WR, Ana Caetano, Susana Paiva, Manuela Vaz, Rui Luís, Helena Ferreira, Beatriz Areias, Isabel Dantas dos Reis, Lara Limaverde and Sandra Teixeira (Spring edition) and Bárbara Freitas, Miguel Duarte, Sérgio Braz d’Almeida, Francesca Faulin, Paula Arinto and João Daniel (Autumn edition).
A lot of what happened after the residency (collectively trying to organize group shows, publications, whatever) was problematic (to be expected), but the core of what I set out to do here exceeded my expectations, and I don’t even know what those were. Artists who came might have a different perspective and am sure they have their own critics, but I can’t voice about that, nor would I want to at this moment in time.
I like to share whatever good comes my way. I’ve been doing it a lot since this house came into my life, in 2018. It was a slow but conscious process, that almost failed to start, but I managed to jump towards choosing life, trying to be a better person and committing to change my relationship with darkness. I trust the universe surrounds me with whatever energy and wisdom is needed. Sometimes my intuition or my instincts (or both) fail. During those times, though I can sense something is about to happen, I don’t know what nor when, so when that sense of fear or disconnection sets in, I hesitate for some days, sometimes weeks, till the energy clears and I’m able to ‘read’ what’s going on again. But, most of the time since that commitment, I’m connected and I take risks. Who wants to live forever? I surely don’t.
This house is mine and it isn’t. I’m not a foreigner here, but possession and propriety are both concepts I despise, so I try to remind myself that this is a gift that I need to cherish for whatever time I can. Doing that project was part of this. Trusting the artists with no reservations. Even when there was little empathy, that didn’t impact the process. It never made me doubt or have reservations regarding whoever came here.
All 19 artists did something marvelous. You see, this is not an artistic residency. It’s just a small house, in a small place, where you can get away from things that don’t matter and dive into a creative mojo. Some of the artists who came took the extra plunge to stay without transportation, so some didn’t even leave the surroundings and some did long walks throughout their stay. All 19 artists who came here had their struggles, either with time, isolation, the weather, the novelty, the lack of inspiration or energy, in lots of cases the exact opposite, some had stressful and/or unexpected episodes, but nothing too dramatic came their way or mine and, from what I can conclude, all that played an important role in their creative processes.
I doubt it will one day be possible to show, in adequate conditions, what was produced here, for several different reasons, but still we managed to put up two small exhibitions to make visible what had taken place at CELEUMA. After the Spring edition of 2022, we exhibited at Analógica, a Photography Festival in Chamusca. After the Autumn edition we were a bit slower and only recently did we manage to celebrate and show the projects created here, at Studio Seco, in Lisbon.
Throughout the entire process, I was always a privileged observer. Each time I came to greet the next artist I had a glimpse of what the previous artists had created while here. So, as artists came in and were given just a clue to inspire their journey, in my head the thread was always wider and stronger. Most of them have shared their experience with me. Obviously, some people are nicer with words than others, obviously each has their own ego to attend to and whatnot, but the thing is even at their best they will always fail to comprehend what this has meant to me.
2022, the year this project took place, was a big transition period. The conditions I was living in, where I was still at, were such, that during that year the only days and nights I was ok and comfortable were spent here, when I was cleaning the house, setting up things or staying for a bit longer. Now that I’ve been living here for little over a year, I understand the creative energy that goes on around pretty well. It’s special. I don’t think they made it better. It was always here. What they did, and what I’m trying to continue, is just not to ruin it, nourish the bliss that makes this possible and, in that way, keep the mojo alive, paying it forward.
To all of you who joined CELEUMA, t h a n k y o u s o m u c h for making this possible. It was a beautiful thing…
Below, clicking the names of the artists will take you to their homes.
N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 