ART RESIDENCY IN BUENOS AIRES

 

The Art Residency in Buenos Aires was URRA’s first residency program, which was held from 2010 to 2016 during one month each year.

 

Each of its seven consecutive editions, brought together a group of approximately fifteen visual artists from different countries and generations to live and work in the city of Buenos Aires for a one month period.

​

This program offered a shared working situation that encouraged the interaction between peers, favouring the exchange of information and experiences and the creation of links with different people, places and art platforms of Argentina and the world.

​

The participants had one month to focus fully on their practice and develop new projects, which could either be conceived in advance or be context-oriented and hence planned during the residency, with no pressure to produce finished work. This residency hoped to stimulate the creation of new work in every possible way including experimental pieces, works in progress, spontaneous collaborations and the generation of ideas for future projects. 

​

During the month of the residency artists shared a large studio space to carry out their projects and to meet up. Different studio buildings where used for each edition, either lent or rented (BSM, G104, Espacio Salamanca, Monte, Casa Zur).

​

Artists from overseas and from Argentina who do not live in Buenos Aires City were in a hotel downtown or in an apartment complex, always located near the studios, whereas the participants based in the city continued to live in their usual homes.

 

Each residency started with a Group Exhibition, that always took place in the Art Gallery Del Infinito Arte, where artists exhibited their pre-existing work. Its aim was to provide artists with more opportunities to exhibit in the local artistic community, and also to give to the public the chance to see previous finished works, together with the more experimental and process-based work promoted by this residency and usually shown in the Open Studios.

​

At the beginning of each residency a series of Audiovisual Presentations were organized, where artists had the opportunity to present documentation of their previous works and current practices in dialogue with the audience. They were held at an auditorium in the city centre that changed in each edition (the auditorium of the CCEBA, MALBA Museum, PROA Foundation and the MATTA Cultural Centre).

​

Each edition finished with an Open Studio in which the public was invited to visit the studios and to see the produced projects in the company of the artists.

 

Artists also participated in an informal program of activities that included visits to museums, galleries, private collections and artists’ studios, shared dinners and informal encounters, in order to encourage the dialogue within the group and the interaction with the local art scene.

 

This program was carried out thanks to the support of different public and private entities from Argentina and the world, including embassies, private companies, government institutions, private institutions and private people among others.