SOMA Summer provides a compelling platform for artists, curators, writers, art historians, and creative professionals to critically analyze their work in an intensive three-week residency program in Mexico. Each year, SOMA Summer is organized around different conceptual frameworks approached through research, discussion, and critique.
SOMA Summer 2022, Avatars In Paradise, will be framed around the flexibility of identity, the limitations of ideology, and the potential of play. Dissolution, projection and decentering will be the main structuring ideas.
The notions of Collapsing, Clouding and Augmenting will be intersected by practical threads that include meditative practices, communal meals, and collaborative character and game building; as well as film and reading groups, site visits, and critical activities such as portfolio reviews, presentations, discussions, and festive gatherings. The program’s escalated curriculum aims to map the current crisis of liberalism and the limitations of representation, to explore narratives and possibilities of posthuman habitats, and to project imaginative futures from the remains of our shared present.
Avatars In Paradise will take place in the former hacienda of Santa María Xalostoc in Tlaxco, state of Tlaxcala. All activities will be conducted in English.
Collaborators:
Arte a 360 Grados (community organization, Mexico), Eduardo Abaroa (artist, Mexico), Ricardo Alzati (artist, Mexico), Brigitte Baptiste (biologist, Colombia), Tania Candiani (artist, Mexico), Virginia Colwell (artist, United States), Madeline Jiménez (artist, Dominican Republic), Hermanos Koumori (designers, Mexico), Renzo Martens (artist, Netherlands), Ana Maria Millan (artist, Colombia), Magnolia de la Garza (curator, Mexico), OEA (artist collective, Mexico) Juan Obando (artist, Colombia), Yoshua Okón (artist, Mexico), Lucas Ospina (artist, Curator), Bárbara Perea (curator, Mexico), and Mohammad Salemy (artist and writer, Iran).
Applications:
Use the online platform to complete your application with the following:
–Short biography
–Curriculum vitae
–Artist’s statement
–Letter of interest
–Portfolio
–Contact information for three references
SOMA Summer invites participants who are eager to reflect on their practice, and who are not focused on preparing work for exhibitions or have previous commitments with impending deadlines.
More information about SOMA Summer / Apply online
Contact ssummer [at] somamexico.org for further information regarding your application.
SOMA Summer 2022 is under the Academic Direction of Juan Obando. SOMA is an experimental pedagogical project, conceived as a platform for reconsideration and reflection where revisiting creative processes is encouraged.
The program might be subject to change.