“Scenes of dance, scenes of life” in Guinea-Bissau
The artistic residency “Scenes of dance, scenes of life” took place from 8 January to 2 February at the Netos de Bandim Cultural Centre in Guinea-Bissau, where the group has its dance, sewing and painting school. Organised in three different phases, the residency aimed to explore mural painting techniques and their use in public spaces as a way of adding value to a space of cultural exchange and community well-being.
During the first week, the participants received training from the project’s curator, Nú Barreto, on the history of Urban Arts, the fundamentals of drawing techniques and perspective, as well as on how to plan the mural painting in the space. Throughout the process, the six artists were in direct contact with the Galeria Jovem painting group and the dancers from the Netos de Bandim group, seeking to focus on movement and how it is transposed from the body to painting.
The final exhibition is a tribute to the journey of the Netos de Bandim Cultural Group and to Guinea-Bissau’s stage culture. The interior and exterior walls of the Centre now tell the stories behind the ancestral roots of the Guinean people through faces painted in bright colours.
This residency is one of the projects being supported this year by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Partnerships with Africa programme, as part of the competition to support Visual Arts Residencies in the PALOP countries. This initiative seeks to promote residencies by supporting artistic institutions, encouraging quality training, artistic production and mobility, establishing networks for knowledge sharing and encouraging the creation of opportunities for reflection, experimentation and dialogue between artists and other participants from the artistic scene.