Residencies
Residencies
These residencies will support the development and co-creation of new artworks and cultural initiatives in collaboration with local communities. By fostering site-specific practices and dialogue, artists and creative professionals will explore sustainable living, community resilience, and climate adaptation rooted in Mediterranean environments and knowledge systems.
Residencies
Duncan Dance Research Centre (DDRC)
Athens, Greece
Residency Dates: 6 October – 1 November 2025
Exposition Dates: April 2026
Artists selected for the residency: Garance Maurer and Annalisa Zegna – Find out more about the artists
THE RESIDENCY HOST: Duncan Dance Research Centre (DDRC)
The residency will be hosted at the Duncan Dance Research Center (DDRC) in Athens, built in 1903 by Isadora & Raymond Duncan. The founders of DDRC were advocates of simple living and of the use and consumption of locally produced goods. Today we are inspired by these principles to explore alternatives through artistic practices that favor conservation, reuse, or repurposing of materials and resources in order to tackle the environmental and social challenges of the climate crisis, denial and alienation. Adjacent to the historic house, a wild garden – initiated in 2021- overlooking the Saronic Sea hosts our ongoing experiment on sustaining institutions, individuals, communities and ecosystems through art and collaboration.
THE RESIDENCY PRODUCER: Delta Pi (Athens, Greece)
Delta Pi is an internationally oriented cultural production and arts management organization dedicated to artistic creation, cultural exchange, and sustainability. Since 2006, it has produced and toured over 200 works globally, collaborating with artists, institutions, and stakeholders. Its mission centers on enabling artistic creation, developing interdisciplinary projects, and fostering social resilience through impactful programs. By working with nonprofits and public institutions, Delta Pi strengthens cultural accessibility, artistic innovation, and social bonds, ensuring a lasting impact in the arts.
During a month-long residency in Athens, artists Annalisa Zegna and Garance Maurer embarked on an exploration of the landscapes, communities, and ecosystems marked by climate change in Greece. Over four weeks, they traveled across the country, engaging with scientists, artisans, activists, and local residents.
They traced pathways of water and loss, visited the drying Lake Mornos that sustains Attica, observed burned landscapes in Chios and Attica affected by recent wildfires, and witnessed ongoing efforts of regeneration and resilience.
Their methodology intertwined traditional ecological knowledge — from the craft of felting wool to site-specific studies in fragile environments — mapping the flow of water, the scars of fire, and the human gestures that connect people, land, and memory. Through this process, they observed the tangible effects of climate stress on both land and communities, alongside the practices of care, resilience, and imagination that arise in response.
On Friday, 31 October, Annalisa and Garance presented their artistic findings in the gardens of the Duncan Dance Research Center in Athens. They transformed the space into a living archive — a forum for data collection, movement, reflection, and attunement to the rhythms of a changing Mediterranean.
These traces form the foundation of an ongoing inquiry that will continue to evolve towards their upcoming exhibition in April 2026.
Photo credits: Garance Maurer, Annalisa Zegna, Mauro Diciocia, Stella Rizou
Residencies
Gardens of the Future
Nicosia, Cyprus
Residency Dates: 5 November – 4 December 2025
Exposition Dates: May 2026
Artists selected for the residency: Christina Zambulaki and Caterina Miralles – Find out more about the artists
THE RESIDENCY HOST: Gardens of the Future
The residency will be hosted at our local community garden partner Gardens of the Future in the historic centre of Nicosia, within the Venetian Walled City. Accessed through a network of narrow streets, the Gardens of the Future are housed in abandoned buildings, a legacy of the 1974 Turkish invasion. The Gardens, the initiative of architect Anastasia Christou and a collective of artists, architects, anthropologists, innovators and cultural actors (including D6EU Co-Director, Argyro Toumazou) make use of the ‘secret’ gardens, unseen from the street, at the centre of a number of heritage-town houses.
Full of character, warmth and innovation it is a meeting place for established and newly arrived local communities. A place to garden, to talk, to eat. A place to host, to share and to consider responses to the growing problem of the rising temperatures. In 2022, The Gardens of the Future were awarded the New European Bauhaus Community award for their work around innovative community responses to the climate crisis.
THE RESIDENCY PRODUCER: D6:EU (Nicosia, Cyprus)
D6:EU is a visual arts organisation based in Cyprus, developing new opportunities for artists and cultural collaborations in Cyprus, Europe and the Middle East. Together with an exceptional team and board, we collaborate with artists, cultural producers, heritage professionals, policy makers and communities to develop international programmes that encourage equity and social and environmental justice. This programme is underpinned by our values of equity, sustainability, curiosity and generosity.
The MATCH residency in Nicosia concluded with a strong sense of continuity, shared learning, and artistic growth, reflecting the core aims of the joint residency programme. Hosted at the Gardens of the Future, resident artists Christina Zambulaki and Caterina Miralles were supported through a structured programme of field visits, guided sessions, and opportunities for dialogue with local experts, community members, and environmental practitioners. This framework enabled the artists to engage deeply with Cyprus’s cultural, ecological, and post-extractive landscapes while developing their research for Earth-bound Exercises.
Throughout the residency, the artists followed a methodology grounded in observation, situated research, and cross-disciplinary exchange. Their site visit to Skouriotissa Mine, along with explorations of the adjacent forests and agricultural land, formed a central component of their research. Combined with sessions at the Gardens and the insights shared during the Scientific Espresso, these encounters helped shape the conceptual and material direction of their work.
Both artists used their time in Nicosia to refine the content of Earth-bound Exercises, a project linking the terrain of the Gardens with the landscape surrounding the Hellenic Copper Mines. Their work incorporated field recording, point-cloud mapping, organism-based research, and the development of experimental water-collection devices. These processes supported their aim to propose non-extractive, attentive, and ecologically sensitive ways of engaging with land.
The residency culminated in a public Open Studio session, where Christina and Caterina shared their in-progress research with local audiences. The event welcomed participants from diverse backgrounds, including cultural practitioners, students, neighbours, and environmental stakeholders. The discussions generated during this session offered valuable feedback, raised new questions, and reinforced the importance of embedding artistic research within community-oriented, participatory frameworks.
Overall, the residency fostered meaningful exchanges between the artists, the hosting team, and the public. Feedback highlighted the value of direct engagement with local landscapes and the interdisciplinary nature of the programme. Both artists expressed that the residency provided the time, space, and context needed to develop their ideas and to situate their work within Cyprus’s wider environmental and socio-political narratives. The public response underscored the relevance of the themes explored—ecology, post-extractive futures, food systems, and lived environments—and affirmed the impact of connecting artistic practice with local knowledge.
Residencies
La Friche la Belle de Mai
Marseille, France
Residency Dates: 26 January – 26 February 2026
Exposition Dates: June 2026
Artists selected for the residency: Swati Devichi and Lizzie Reid – Find out more about the artists
THE RESIDENCY PRODUCER AND HOST: La Friche (Marseilles, France)
THE RESIDENCY HOST: Friche la Belle de Mai – Jardins des Rails
The residency will be hosted at « The Jardins des rails » a community garden located at the Friche la Belle de Mai. This garden is shared between inhabitants of la Belle de Mai neighborhodd.
This part of La Friche is divided into plots for experimenting with vegetable and ornamental crops, as well as all forms of urban gardening. You will also find a dry garden, containers dedicated to educational gardening, various planting pits, and a rock garden.
Whether they are local residents, students from the Gilles Vigneault school or the Belle de Mai middle school, members of the La Ruche Verte association, or students from the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage, all these gardeners work this space to make this former industrial site more fertile.
THE RESIDENCY PRODUCER: La Friche la Belle de Mai (Marseille, France)
La Friche, in its prototypal form, arose in 1992 out of the new models for urban cultural interaction in the public interest, now known as “third places.” This unique, reinvented space brings together artistic activity, modes of urban transformation, real connections to the region, and dynamic cooperation.
La Friche is both a workspace for 70 resident organizations (400 artists, producers, and employees work here every day), and a cross-disciplinary venue (each year, over 600 artistic events are made available to the public). Every year, 450,000 visitors come to this 45,000 square-meter public space housing five performance spaces, a community garden, a playground and athletic space, a restaurant, bookstore, daycare, some 2,400 square meters of exhibition space, an 8,000 square-meter rooftop, and a training center.
www.lafriche.org | Instagram | Facebook
During the residency Lizzie Reid aims to create a collaborative artwork based on the knowledge gathered during the residency, ideally resulting in a piece that can live on in the green space in some form. Swati Devichi aims to foster shared authorship, regenerative imagination, and a deeper sense of care for everyday urban spaces. The Jardin des Rails offers fertile ground for using photography as a tool for archiving, justice, and hopeful transformation.
Residency at la Friche la Belle de Mai – Work-in-progress
As part of the MATCH programme and the Capacity Building Workshop in Marseille, Lizzie Reid and Swati Devichi are currently in residence at la Friche la Belle de Mai, exploring the theme Territories in Transition. Rooted in the Friche’s unique cultural ecosystem, their research engages with local initiatives, practitioners, and everyday users of the site.
How does your residency at La Friche la Belle de Mai help feed your work?
Lizzie Reid: «La Friche is the perfect setting for me to explore my topic of extreme heat and how it tests and reshapes the relationships between people, buildings, and nature. In this inherited infrastructure, many people are rethinking how to respond to rising temperatures – from opening up closed spaces to breaking up the concrete that burns in summer. Through encounters with workers, gardeners, and neighbours, I am gathering insights into how heat is experienced and what people need in order to respond collectively. While living and working at La Friche, I’m inspired by observing how people bring life into its in-between spaces and make them their own. Conducting research in winter for an exhibition in June, I hope the project can act as a kind of time capsule – creating messages and interventions now to be encountered as the heat rises.»
Swati Devichi: «Being able to work from La Friche is such a great opportunity since I’m gradually exploring the historical presence of female figures in the Belle de Mai neighborhood, learning about the Italian women who worked in the neighborhood’s factories, the midwives who studied at the maternity hospital next to La Friche, and the community of Sisters Victims of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus who lived cloistered in the convent for two centuries, a few streets away. At the same time, I’m just beginning to create double-exposure portraits, exploring the links between the neighborhood’s current residents and spontaneous and chosen vegetation, and being able to stay right in the heart of the neighborhood is such a bliss.»
Residencies
La Escocesa
Barcelona, Spain
Residency Dates: 1 – 31 March 2026
Exposition Dates: September 2026
Artists selected for the residency: Hannah Taylor and Nafsika Hadjichristou – Find out more about the artists
THE RESIDENCY PRODUCER AND HOST: La Escocesa (Barcelona, Spain)
La Escocesa is an artist-led contemporary visual arts organisation and residency space managed collectively through the artists’ association ‘Associació d’Idees EMA’. La Escocesa focus on supporting artists and cultural agents, offering workspaces and resources for the development of their projects. As a space inhabited by the artistic community, La Escocesa focus not only on the production and creation of works, but also on the common generation of knowledge, networks of care and new ways of building and practising cultural institutions. The associative nature of the centre enables the active participation of the artists, generating an horizontal collective structure through which the centre is managed.
As a feminist institution, La Escocesa’s values arise from an intersectional, emancipatory, cooperative and inclusive position, which advocates for sustainability, experimentation, collaboration and the development of community artistic projects. They understand their values not only as a series of statements but as commitments that must be put into practice through a collective process of constant learning and reflection.
Residencies
K2 Contemporary Art Center
Izmir, Turkey
Residency Dates: 9 May – 6 June 2026
Exposition Dates: November 2026
Artists selected for the residency: Joana Amora and Maya Aghniadis – Find out more about the artists
THE RESIDENCY HOST: K2 Contemporary Art Centre (Izmir, Turkey)
The residency in Turkey will be hosted at K2 Contemporary Art Center, a non-profit institution in Izmir operating since 2003. It prioritizes emerging artists and offers exhibitions, training, seminars, performances, artist talks and more. K2 collaborates on projects with national and international partners, funded by organizations like the EU, Goethe Institut, and Izmir Development Agency. K2 organizes PORTIZMIR – International Contemporary Art Triennial and houses a public visual arts library. It also runs K2 Urla Breathing Zone (K2UBZ), an artist residency in a 45 acre forest in Urla.
THE RESIDENCY PRODUCER: BJCEM (Turin, Italy)
BJCEM is an independent international network of 47 members in 16 countries, ranging from cultural institutions to independent organisations, with partnerships across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and organisations and projects focused on the Mediterranean Diaspora. Fiercely independent, BJCEM’s members develop cultural activities that provide young creators opportunities to showcase their artworks, including festivals, seminars, residency projects, research activities, training activities, presentations and debates, alongside the Biennial of Young Artists, will next take place in Gorizia – Nova Gorica as part of GO! 2025 European Capital of Culture.
